How Your Business Could Benefit from a vCIO

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Businesses often hire a managed service provider (MSP) for tech support. But if that’s all you’re getting from your MSP, you could be missing out. You might gain by adding a Virtual CIO.

The typical MSP engagement involves coming in and surveying your IT infrastructure. You can expect the MSP to:

  • make sure your antivirus software is up to date (or that you have it in the first place);
  • install firewalls and other security protections;
  • patch or update any tech that needs it;
  • establish a data backup process.

Some MSPs will stop there. If that’s all they offer, you might consider expanding your view of what an IT provider can offer your business. Your tech support can also drive strategy to save money and ensure safe, smooth operations, and you may need a virtual CIO.

What is a vCIO?

Members of your C-suite are experts in their focus areas. A virtual chief information officer (vCIO) specializes in the latest technology and cybersecurity. More than “tech support,” the vCIO is a strategist invested in your business’s success, but they do this as a third party, virtually, instead of as an in-house employee.

A vCIO analyzes your IT infrastructure for weaknesses to suggest process or security reworks. They can formulate long-term technology goals based on your business objectives. Then, they’ll provide a road map for your technology strategy.

An MSP is more focused on service delivery, whereas the vCIO takes a forward-looking approach. Working with more decision-making authority, the VCIO can create an IT budget. They can also work to reduce your business expenses. One way they’ll do this is by building relationships with vendors to ensure the best rates and services. Note: you should already be saving money by working with a vCIO rather than hiring a traditional CIO.

What to look for in a vCIO?

The IT expert or experts taking on your vCIO role should bring a wide range of skills to the table. These include:

  • ability to align your IT strategy to your business goals;
  • robust knowledge of technology trends to understand what will best serve your organization;
  • project planning and management skills to ensure completion on time and within scope;
  • experience in cost optimization and measuring key performance indicator metrics;
  • ability and willingness to collaborate effectively with teams throughout the business;
  • communication skills to report to business stakeholders, and liaise with clients and vendors.

Our MSP your vCIO

Some MSPs steer clear of planning and assisting with decision-making. They hone in on today’s operational tasks and fix current problems, but our IT experts are here to add immense value to your business. Partner with us in the vCIO role. We’ll be supportive and provide a technology direction to help you grow your business.

Contact us today at (515)422-1995.

Easy Upgrades for your Home Office

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Working from home wasn’t novel when the pandemic hit, yet COVID-19 forced businesses globally to give remote work a real try. Two years later, employees have a new view of modern work. Many expect to work from home, at least part-time. If you’re “commuting” daily within your home, you’ll want to consider these easy upgrades for your home office.

First, an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) can save you a lot of stress. Although common in the business environment, homeowners may not have thought about one. A UPS allows your computer to keep running in the event of a power outage. Think of the UPS as a backup battery giving you a short window of energy to protect your data. They can also regulate voltage in the event of a power surge.

With a UPS, size typically matters: the bigger the battery, the more power it will store. So, consider what technology you’ll want to keep up and running and for how long.

Size can also matter with your computer monitor. Working on a laptop can be convenient, but the screen will be smaller. Setting up your home office with a wide monitor can lead to productivity gains. This is especially true for people who like to keep all their files and folders up on their desktops.

You can also reduce the time spent scrolling through open windows with a second monitor. That extra monitor may also save you from printing documents and cluttering your desktop with paper.

Improving work quality in the home office

The business environment is going digital. Do the same with a document scanner that handles many pages at once. Flatbed scanners can provide quality scans, but speed and quantity may matter more. Plus, once your documents are scanned, you’ll be able to search for information using keywords. Instead of poring over pages of text, you can go pour yourself another cup of coffee.

If you’re stuck at your desk once the workday starts, invest in a standing desk. There are many options that allow you to easily convert the desk from sitting to standing and back again. This can help your energy levels and reduce stress on your body from sitting in the same position all day.

Speaking of reducing physical stress, an ergonomic keyboard is another good investment. Plus, you may want to get yourself a better office chair. Back when your home office was a seldom-used space, sitting at an old dining room chair wasn’t a big deal. Now, though, you’ll want to do your body the kindness of getting a comfortable, supportive chair.

One more simple upgrade to consider: noise-cancelling headphones make it easier to focus on your work while dogs bark. You’ll also avoid volunteering for extra work without realizing that was what your boss was saying while you were shushing a child.

Need help deciding on the right technology for your home office, or want to be sure you set it up correctly and securely? Our IT experts are here to help. Contact us today at (515)422-1995.

Encourage Better Work Habits with Microsoft Viva Insights

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Productivity has always been important at work. Yet our awareness that well-being factors into productivity is newer. Microsoft is getting in on that trend with its Viva Insights offering. This article shares the basics of how it improves productivity and helps well-being.

Viva Insights is part of Microsoft’s Viva Suite focused on employee experience. The app gathers data while users work and provides recommendations for improvements.

In Microsoft Teams, Insights reviews collaboration data and suggests strategies to boost engagement. Recognizing common topics across conversations, Insights might automatically create a page devoted to that focus area.

Insights also connect people with meeting reminders and by sending RSVP reminders.

Insights can suggest users take breaks or set longer windows of time for focused work. There’s a Do Not Disturb functionality to help prevent distractions, too.

It is not just process-oriented either. Based on Insights, Viva Learning curates courses to foster learning and self-discovery for individual users.

In Personal Insights, individuals can log how they feel throughout the day. Automated check-ins encourage users to take a moment to reflect or to use the Headspace app integration for guided meditation.

A great feature for remote workers is “start a virtual commute.” This guides people to review and close tasks, preview the next day, and mindfully end their day.

Guides better management, too

The “My Organization” page gives team managers insights into employee trends. They can view items such as “average weekly time spent collaborating after hours,” or see the percentage of employees spending time in “long and large meetings,” or how many one-on-ones they are having with managers, or if they have little time to focus on tasks because of meeting overload.

Insights also give managers input to help them better engage with employees. Managers can view aggregated and anonymized feelings data on the Insights dashboard. This can help them identify the risk of burnout or turnover. When everyone’s feeling overwhelmed, Insights might suggest a no-meetings day.

This may sound a little Big Brother – the platform analyzes Outlook, Teams, and OneDrive activity. Still, Microsoft promises “only you can view personal data and insights based on work patterns.” Managers see data that captures overall user insights.

Getting the most from Microsoft’s Viva Insights

We can help your business get started with Microsoft Viva Insights. We can connect employees to Insights and assign manager roles within the platform. We can make other suggestions, too, about how to get the most out of your Microsoft tools.

Contact us today at (515)422-1995.

Talk to Your Staff About Tech Success and Stumbling Blocks

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You may be in charge of tech for your entire business, but that doesn’t mean you actually use all the technology you source, install, and maintain. You’re responsible for updating that tech, supporting it, and monitoring for threats, yet you don’t have hands-on with that tech day in and day out. That means you can’t fully understand what’s working and what isn’t.

To gain a holistic picture of how your technology is working, ask the people who use it every day. You can’t rely on the fact that people aren’t complaining to mean your hardware or software is running smoothly.

There are many reasons employees might not reach out to tell you what’s wrong:

  • They are too busy to bring up their issues.
  • They don’t know how to communicate what’s holding them up.
  • They don’t realize that the obstacle they’re hitting isn’t normal for a particular solution.
  • They don’t know who to talk to about the problems they are having.

So, it’s up to you to be proactive. Reach out to employees to find out what they need to do their jobs better.

Gain the employee’s perspective

If you’re in IT, you’re seldom found in the trenches with your sales or marketing. You aren’t in accounting trying to track payments or keep up with supply-chain management. So, you can’t expect to know what the lived experience of your tech is like for those teams.

Talking to your staff about what’s needed can help you learn about:

  • digital solutions your people have heard about from peers at other companies;
  • new technologies staff would like to try;
  • roadblocks that are slowing productivity and undermining employee morale;
  • low-hanging-fruit changes that you can make to improve an employee’s experience (e.g. adding a second screen may be all that a disgruntled staffer needs to see their job isn’t so bad).

You might host a lunch-and-learn, where you discuss technology with different teams, or you could send around a survey. Emailing employees directly, and asking them to answer key questions can help, too. Focus your information gathering in three areas:

  • What works well for you?
  • What challenges are you facing?
  • What would make your life easier?

Of course, people are going to have different ways of speaking about technology. They probably don’t know a LAN from a PAN or a WAN, for example, but they will be able to convey whether they feel the network is too slow or not.

Prioritize tech solutions

Talking to people in the trenches with tech can help set infrastructure priorities. Once you’ve learned what tech is needed and what isn’t working as you’d hoped, reach out to a managed service provider for help. We can consult on new solutions and help you streamline business processes. We know tech for small businesses. Contact us today at (515)422-1995.

Making the Most of Microsoft Lists

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If you have Microsoft 365 but aren’t using Microsoft Lists, you could be missing out. This useful feature, which is included with your 365 subscription, helps businesses work more efficiently.

Lists is a productivity feature on Microsoft 365 (MS365), formerly Microsoft Office. This app is a more recent addition to the MS365 app store, so you may have missed it. This article shares some advantages of this tracking and work management app.

An upgrade of SharePoint lists, which has been with MS365 all along, Lists integrates with Microsoft Teams. This means Lists help you collaborate and cooperate better. In fact, all users in a Teams channel with a List can access and edit that List without leaving Teams.

With Lists, you can create, distribute, and track data in a configurable way. Yes, it is good for helping you make a simple list of, say, things to do, but you can do much more with Lists.

Added functionality of Lists

Lists comes with templates to get you started quickly. You can also configure the lists to suit your specific business needs. Plus, you can set the lists to display in the way that works best for you. Maybe you want to look at Lists as a calendar, a grid, a gallery, or in a custom view. You can do that but in real-time, with everyone using that list getting the same updated data when they’re logged in.

In Lists, you set up tables of information to track extensive amounts of data. For example, you might track a project in Microsoft Lists by adding all the tasks to a List. You could add columns for the person responsible, task status, project priority, and more. You can also use colors within the List to help sort information more easily.

Additionally, since Lists is part of MS365, you can use Lists wherever and on whichever device you access the software. You can also integrate Lists with other powerful tools on the MS365 platform. You might extend forms with Power Apps or customize workflows with Power Automate. With automation, you get even more from your Lists.

Taking advantage of Lists

There are many business applications with Lists. Besides project management, you might organize an event itinerary and speaker info in a List, or track assets, or manage a new employee onboarding checklist. If you have an idea of something you want to create, configure, watch, and share, you can probably do it within Lists.

Lists is a default feature in MS365 Teams, but you can switch it on or off in the Teams admin center at any time. You can even permit or ban certain users from Lists.

If you’re not yet using MS365, our IT gurus can help you get started. If you’re on the platform already, let our experts help you get the most you can from your license. Call us today at (515)422-1995.

What is Digital Friction, and What to Do About It?

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No one wants to work harder than they have to. Digital transformation is one way businesses can make employees’ lives easier. Yet simply increasing the amount of technology isn’t the answer. Digital friction can actually make the workday more challenging. Read on to learn more about digital friction, its demotivating force, and how to avoid it.

Digital friction describes added challenges employees face trying to work with business technology. As businesses add more digital tools, teams must adapt to a more complex ecosystem, but problems can arise:

  • Technology isn’t integrated, so there are now more steps to follow.
  • Workflows grow more complicated, as there are several digital solutions to navigate.
  • Employees are overwhelmed with notifications tracking, managing, and monitoring digital workflows.
  • New approaches create or duplicate manual processes.
  • Employees become overloaded with information thanks to the many new collaborative, digital tools.

Any of these issues is counterproductive to digital transformation. The idea behind adding new digital solutions is to streamline and simplify, but if you’re complicating the work environment, you’ll undermine productivity. You aren’t helping employee engagement and morale either. Your people grow frustrated with your fresh expectations.

Sources of digital friction

When you install new tech, you intend to save time, reduce effort, and improve productivity, but the best intentions don’t avoid digital friction. If you’re going to install digital technologies be wary of these problems:

  • Poor understanding of workflow. If you don’t understand what is happening now, you can’t effectively install digital processes.
  • Inconsistent workflows. When employees approach processes differently, there will be friction on new, digital solutions.
  • Poor-quality data. Digital technology relies on data. A major source of digital friction is low-quality data. Employees spend too much time locating, validating, and formatting data to see benefits.
  • Lack of understanding of a solution’s impact. Investing in tech for the sake of “going digital” is not setting employees up for success. You need to know what the technology can do and how it will impact employees’ daily work.

What to do about digital friction

Before even adding technology, consult with your employees. Learn their pain points and what they want from a digital solution. Find out how they are doing their jobs today. Then, you can work with an IT consultant to determine which digital offerings will add value.

Look for opportunities to integrate your digital technology. Help employees avoid information overload and being constantly pinged and notified. Take stock of all the apps and software you’re using. Identify where you are duplicating processes, especially manual ones. Ferret out the places where your people are having to work harder to do their jobs. Know that data quality is a prime culprit.

Make decisions about new digital technology based on outcomes. What do you want the software to do? How will it be used and managed? Be sure you know how this new tool you’re offering is going to help people if you want them to embrace the change.

Simplify access by ensuring employees have a positive user experience. With more employees working remotely or hybrid, they need to do their jobs on a wider range of devices.

Need help cutting digital friction? Our technology-agnostic IT experts can identify problems and increase productivity. We can also consult on legacy tech and data migration to support digital transformation success. Call us today at (515)422-1995.

“Save Me the Money”: Why Work with an MSP

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The pandemic, a supply-chain crisis, and rising inflation are impacting the economy. In this current climate, your business may be budgeting with caution, and you might question the value of partnering with a managed service provider (MSP). Yet as counterintuitive as it may seem, adding MSP services could save you money overall.

The right MSP supports your business efficiency. You can also cut costs and get more from your IT investment. At the same time, you gain a partner to provide IT monitoring and maintenance. This can help avoid costly downtime and lost productivity from unexpected IT disruptions. Instead of reacting to problems, the MSP proactively manages your tech to ensure it meets your evolving needs.

One of the first things an MSP will do is get an overview of your business technology environment. The MSP can identify savings with an objective view of systems, software, and hardware. The MSP often lowers IT overheads by looking at all bills and subscriptions to find duplicates and the right fit for your plans. The MSP has provider relationships to draw upon and can help find the right solution at the right price. Unlike software salespeople, there’s no advantage in an MSP attempting to sell you more than you need.

Affordable IT expertise

With an MSP, you also avoid the effort and expense of recruiting, retaining, and training your own IT staff. Bringing in an IT team is increasingly expensive. Demand for such talent is high, and the labor market is tight. But with an MSP, you gain access to tech talent that has a breadth of experience, plus, the MSP is doing the hiring and HR for those experts.

Already have IT people on-site? Keep them happier by giving them challenging projects and inviting them to innovate. They can be contributing to your bottom line while the MSP’s team takes on the routine, mundane IT tasks.

Further, an MSP helps you scale without the challenges of bringing in more IT help or having to let valued staff go. An MSP can help your business migrate to the cloud, where you can grow tech capabilities without having to invest in more staff or systems. If market pressures make scaling back makes sense, you can also do that easily in the cloud with an MSP’s help.

Cost-effective IT solutions with MSPs

The MSP’s goal is to solve your tech problems. Success is boosting business efficiency and finding cost-effective IT solutions. Taking a proactive approach to IT, MSP experts can also cut cybersecurity risk, or, if the worst does happen, they can have plans in place to help your business get back up and running quickly. That can help you save money, too.

Find out more about the value of investing in MSP services. Contact us today at (515)422-1995!

How SaaS Can Save Your Business Money

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When you see the acronym SaaS you may not immediately think of dollar signs, though the S‘s are pretty close. Yet Software as a Service, what SaaS stands for, can save business money.

What is SaaS?

For SaaS to save you money, you need to understand what this solution involves. Think back to a few years ago: installing software from discs was one of the first things you had to do with a new computer. Depending on how old you are, you might remember doing so from a CD or maybe even a floppy disc!

A business might have paid for several licenses and uploaded the software to many computers, but each copy was unique, whether uploaded to on-premises computers or laptops.

The SaaS solution offers greater flexibility. The business user gains online access to whatever software applications they need. There is no need to install each specific app on Jamal’s computer and then do the same for Janice. Instead, the software is available whenever users want and on the device they choose. It doesn’t matter, as long as they have internet connectivity.

This means workers no longer have to be on-site to use all business tools. Plus, since applications aren’t installed on business machines, you don’t need the same storage space or processing power.

How SaaS saves you money

Software as a Service reduces your upfront costs. Under the old model, you needed to pay for the physical disc or download the software from the internet. You also needed to ensure you had the appropriate hardware to run the applications. Plus, you would pay to maintain the license and support the software.

With SaaS, you pay only the monthly or annual subscription fee. The vendor providing the software has the servers and hardware. That means they cover the costs for its maintenance and upkeep. Meanwhile, you get the advantage of a set fee that covers licensing and support.

Cloud-based SaaS is also economically priced for the number of users you want to access that software. Since it is in the cloud, you can scale up or down as your business needs change. If you’re not using the software as much as you expected, drop that application. You’ve paid only a subscription fee rather than investing in a lifetime license, hardware, and maintenance.

Starting with SaaS

The one big concern businesses have about SaaS is data security. Having control of the software on-site can feel safer. But SaaS providers invest more in cybersecurity than your small business could. Their business depends on reliability and resilience. They build in redundancy, have backup tech, and keep the software upgraded and secure.

Making the move to SaaS doesn’t have to be difficult, especially if you partner with another acronym, an MSP. A managed service provider can help you find software solutions for your needs. We’ll advise you on SaaS options and support your transition to the convenience and cost savings of SaaS. Call us now at (515)422-1995!

Avoid This Top IT mistake: The “Wait and See” Approach

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Patience is often a virtue, and being budget-conscious is also a plus in business. Yet taking a “wait and see” approach with business tech is a top IT mistake.

There is a lot of uncertainty in the current economy. You may be looking to save money to give your business more budget leeway. But if you don’t make ongoing investments in your IT, your business could suffer.

You might skip software upgrades, but that can put your business at risk from cyber bad actors, who look to exploit weaknesses when people don’t upgrade their systems.

Deciding to put off replacing older devices or legacy hardware, you may be thinking, “What’s one more year?” It can make a big difference, actually. Your systems may have vulnerabilities that cyber-attackers will leverage. Your hardware may not be able to keep up with your business during its busy times, and your people could be working on devices that are no longer supported by the manufacturer. If something does go wrong, you’re on your own.

Trying to get by with less when it comes to business technology can hurt your business. We’re not saying you have to throw all sorts of money at every new technology out there, of course; it’s about fitting the right technology to your specific business needs.

Business tech: Better now than later

Businesses today are undergoing digital transformation. Across industries, people see the advantages of IT. The right technology enhances the quality of work and boosts productivity. You have the tools needed to support faster processing and wider information distribution.

Thinking only short-term about technology, as in “it’s working fine for now,” could hurt you in the long run, however, and by not looking after your tech and keeping it current, you could be missing out on:

  • keeping your software and systems patched and protected against the latest cyber threats;
  • enjoying the greater efficiency that comes from streamlined workflows and business process best practices;
  • being able to collaborate seamlessly with team members or clients and customers via the latest cloud communications tools;
  • getting things done more easily with the hardware and software you need to keep up with your business;
  • scaling up or down as your business needs with the convenience of cloud technology;
  • having peace of mind that if there is a data breach or other system disruption, you have a backup to get your business back up.

Moving forward with an MSP

There is an inevitability to investment in business tech. You know you’re going to need it. But taking the wait-and-see approach simply puts you at risk of a cyberattack or other productivity drains. Keeping your IT current and investing in this essential area can benefit employee engagement, customer satisfaction, and your business’s bottom line.

Not sure what technology to focus on while working within your budget? Our IT experts can help. We’ll get to know your systems and your unique needs. Then, we’ll make suggestions about the smartest investment areas for your business. Contact us today at (515)422-1995!

Turn to Your MSP for Vendor Management

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With a managed service provider (MSP), your business expects tech support, infrastructure monitoring, and maintenance. Did you know vendor management is another service you can entrust to these IT experts?

You have vendors – lots of them – probably more so now that your work environment has gone hybrid. Yet managing all your vendors can be challenging. Different departments may even have their own vendor relationships. Without vendor management, there’s no one bridging the siloes. No one ensures cost savings while improving efficiency and productivity.

What is vendor management?

Vendor management centralizes the oversight of different vendors. If each department contracts on its own, you can’t take advantage of economies of scale, and you may also suffer from inefficiencies and inconsistencies. Each vendor may have different processes, services, and price points, yet no one is managing vendor partnerships to see how they impact your bottom line.

Turn to your MSP for expert analysis and oversight of vendors. An MSP can:

  • tackle contract transactions;
  • implement the changes;
  • seek data integration;
  • avoid possible compliance implications;
  • find greater efficiencies;
  • save you money by identifying duplication or finding more competitive bids;
  • increase the visibility of vendor sourcing, management, and payment.

What does MSP vendor management include?

Say you want a new Web host. You’ll spend time identifying vendors, researching possibilities, and deciding who gets your business. Then something goes wrong. Now, you need to get in touch with that vendor to troubleshoot. Plus, you’ll always need to manage that relationship and keep up with payments.

Now, multiply that effort by the many different vendors you have. You likely have antivirus solutions, broadband internet, disaster recovery, and off-site backup vendors, as well as partners providing email security, hardware maintenance, telecommunications, and Web hosting. Different offices or departments might even contract with separate vendors for these services.

Your MSP can provide added value by streamlining your vendor management. A technology- and vendor-neutral MSP can look for the best solutions for your business goals. The MSP’s goal is to find the right alignment with your objectives. That’s where they add the most value to you as a customer.

An MSP may use vendor management software to track and measure. This supports more informed decision-making. Plus, it can automate processes such as expense management, requisitioning, payments, and reporting.

Positively impact your bottom line

Drawing on experience with a variety of vendors, the MSP can simplify your supply chain. The MSP may be able to leverage preferred relationships to negotiate better rates.

Plus, their experts are up to date on the ins and outs of supporting those vendor offerings. Say there is an issue with email security. There could be a faster resolution if the vendor talks to an informed tech professional; that’s easier than a harried accountant who doesn’t know an SPF from a DKIM or a DMARC (and shouldn’t need to).

Let our experts handle your vendor management to centralize and simplify these relationships. Work with the best people and the right technology, and enjoy a better return on investment. Contact us today at (515)422-1995.

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