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The 7 Irresistible Qualities of Cloud ERP
Learn why ERP tools are an critical component for many businesses.
Why a Business Continuity Plan is Essential
Learn why your company needs a business continuity plan.
Ransomware 101
If you’re looking for ways to stop ransomware dead in its tracks, the experts at CCS Technology are here to help.
How managed services make the difference
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Cloud Services and the SMB Revolution
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Office 365 Migration Made Easy
Migrating over to Office 365 has never been easier with CCS Technology.
The Advantages of Working with I.T. Pros
Learn how working with a seasoned technology pro makes your work easier.
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Choose the Right IT Service Type to Best Meet Your Business Needs
/in Blog, Managed Services /by lindsayIT services come in several different forms. If the service type you choose doesn’t match your requirements, you won’t get the benefits you expect and will likely be disappointed by your experience. Make sure you know what different IT services offer so the one you select is a good fit for your business.
1. Break-fix
Break fix services provide support to fix problems after they occur. When hardware breaks or software fails, you can call the break-fix company to investigate and resolve the problem. This approach is entirely reactive and doesn’t look beyond the immediate problem.
2. Contractor
A contractor is effectively an addition to your staff without adding a permanent employee. Through the contracting agency, you’ll select someone with the appropriate skillset for the job. They then work under your direction on whatever assignment you give to them. While contractors are sometimes called consultants, a contractor’s services are less independent than true consulting.
3. Consulting Services
Consultants are brought in to solve specific problems. Unlike contractors, consultants are expected to think independently to develop solutions to larger problems. The scope of the consulting work is up to you. Generally, you provide the consultants a statement of the problem; they investigate to determine the requirements, propose a solution, and complete the project implementation.
4. Outsourcing
When you outsource your IT to a provider, you hand over control of your IT resources to the outsourcing firm. They handle all the ongoing support. Unless you request a project to expand or upgrade your IT technology, the focus is on maintaining your current infrastructure.
5. Managed Services
With managed services, as with outsourcing, you rely on a provider and their staff to provide you with IT services including monitoring and support. However, unlike outsourcing, the managed services provider looks towards your future needs. Outsourcing is “outside” of your business. Managed services providers are partners with your business and take ownership of resource-related issues, including making sure the infrastructure will support your business as it changes. They can recommend and implement the infrastructure you will need tomorrow, not just support the infrastructure you need today.
Learn more about the benefits of partnering with a managed services provider.
Be clear: none of these services is better than any other, but one might be a better fit to your business. It entirely depends on what your IT challenges are, the level of IT expertise you have in-house, and how much control of your IT resources you’re willing to turn over to a third-party. Contact CCS Technology Group to discuss how our IT services match your business and IT needs.
Interested in learning more? Find out the benefits of working with IT pros.
Balance Risks and Rewards When Making the Cloud Decision
/in Blog, Cloud /by lindsayDeciding to invest in cloud technology, like making any IT investment, requires balancing the risks against the rewards. This scale will tilt differently for every business depending on its internal priorities and the challenges of its internal IT. How do these numbers stack up for you?
Assessing the Cloud Risk Balance
There are a number of cloud risks you should consider, along with ways they can potentially be mitigated.
Risk: Security
For many businesses, the security of cloud remains a major concern. With data in a shared environment that isn’t completely under your control, there are new threats to data security.
Balance:
There are threats to data security within your own data center. Many businesses lack security expertise on staff, and they are behind on basic security measures such as patch installation. In the cloud, you have the benefit of the cloud provider’s security team, and they handle much routine support and maintenance.
Mitigate:
You can mitigate data security risks in the cloud by taking advantage of tools that help ensure a secure environment and authorized access to data. Many cloud providers have documented best practices and can analyze where your configurations don’t follow those suggestions. You can often implement your own security measures with firewalls, cloud access security brokers, and encryption. Learn more in 6 Ways to Keep Your Cloud Secure.
Risk: Over-spending
Although cloud can be lower-cost than on premises infrastructure, it’s easy to spend more than expected. These unexpected expenses can come from higher demand than anticipated or through self-service, on-demand instantiation of new, unapproved services.
Balance:
Although cloud spending figures can be substantial, they are generally nowhere near the scale of the capital expenditures associated with on premises infrastructure. In addition, on-demand cloud access gives you greater flexibility and agility than if you have to provision needed resources in your own data center.
Mitigate:
Use tools to help you track changes in your cloud configuration so you can identify new instances and new services. Track utilization numbers and look for opportunities to consolidate. Automate money-saving policies such as shutting servers down at end of day. Learn more in 9 Ways to Get Cloud Costs Under Control.
Risk: Lack of control
Managing cloud resources is complex because there’s a loss of visibility, especially if you use multiple clouds. Until your team develops expertise in the cloud systems, you’ll also find management challenging simply due to lack of experience.
Balance:
Controlling systems in your own data center is challenging, as well. And because the cloud provider handles many of the routine maintenance functions, you’ll have more time to devote to analyzing the data you access.
Mitigate:
Use managed cloud services from CCS Technology Group to add expertise to your team. Our experts can help you select the right cloud, migrate your infrastructure, and provide the support needed to make sure your cloud continues to meet your business needs.
Those are just a few of the risk tradeoffs you’ll want to consider when you’re deciding whether to switch to cloud. Contact CCS Technology Group to learn about other risks and rewards to evaluate and to get help successfully switching to cloud.
5 Benefits of Better Collaboration for Businesses
/in Blog, Microsoft Teams, Productivity /by lindsayWho doesn’t want better collaboration? It’s the corporate version of Mom and Apple Pie. Yet, for all of its attractiveness, collaboration has turned out to be harder to achieve than people expect. There are many reasons for this, including cultural obstacles that prevent people from wanting to work together, e.g. in a hyper competitive work environment, people tend to help themselves, not others. Learn more in 5 Risks of Poor Collaboration in the Workplace.
Assuming the will to collaborate is present, the technology has to be available to make it happen. This, too, has proven difficult, though today the corporate world can choose from a rich array of sophisticated collaboration tools. Microsoft Teams, for instance, is powerful because it accommodates different personal work styles while integrating with the universal “productivity infrastructure” of the Microsoft Office system.
If you’re contemplating a program to stimulate better productivity, here are five benefit you’ll realize in the process:
1) Higher profits
Companies that don’t foster strong collaboration experience a host of hidden costs as a result. These may arise from invisible but expensive problems like people sending multiple emails and making phone calls to get a single task accomplished. Every person/minute in your business costs you something. The more time people waste in non-collaborative processes, the higher your costs will be. Collaboration drives productivity, which drives profits.
2) Stronger growth potential
Collaborative organizations move faster than those without. This enables them to take on more work and facilitate revenue growth. A good collaboration culture, backed by the right technologies, can also adapt to new modes of business—enabling agility and strategic advantage.
3) Improved morale and organizational cohesion
People who don’t like their jobs make their feelings known in ways that can be hard to see, but are nonetheless toxic to an effective organization, e.g. passive aggressive slowdowns, counter-productive perfectionism and so forth. This phenomenon can range from simple frustrations about getting work done to outright battles between people who can’t find ways to work together. Collaboration technology will not solve all of these problems, of course, but it can create a digital workspace where people can find ways to cooperate without cramping their individual styles. The results include better moral and organizational cohesion.
4) Better recruitment results
Prospective employees, particularly those from the newer generation entering the workforce, want to work in positive, collaborative environments. This is a digital native generation that is accustomed to mobile chat apps, social networks and the like. The office should be an extension of that experience.
5) Better talent retention
Once hired, people tend to stay in places where they like the work experience. This may seem obvious, but so many companies fail to connect the dots—proclaiming the value of collaboration but failing to deliver it, in tech terms. For some employees, this may be the factor that drives them out the door. A costly, productivity-sapping recruitment process arises as a result.
Learn more in Improving Collaboration With Microsoft Teams.
Interested in Microsoft Teams? Achieve Ultimate Collaboration in Just 2-3 Weeks
Get a head start with the Teams Quick Start Program from CCS Technology. We can get you up and running on the Microsoft Teams platform in 2-3 weeks so you can transform productivity and translate into more effective meetings, greater revenues, and profits. Click here to learn more.