Fuse Networks Blog

Business technology continues to grow in importance for the small and medium-sized business, especially as many prepare for 2019. Where enterprise-level companies have long been using technology to bring people together and drive overall productivity, many SMBs are new to these opportunities. The availability of cloud resources, coupled with shifts in security, mobility, and other core technologies, makes it important for every organization, no matter what size, to have a comprehensive technology strategy.

Sometimes it might feel like your technology never works as you want it to. You might try to open up a software application only to find an error message that keeps you from being productive. The error doesn’t go away no matter how many times you reload the application. How can you eliminate these issues that threaten to derail your productivity throughout the workday?

It’s no surprise that businesses will avoid spending money on things they don’t need at all costs. While it might seem harmless to avoid investing in certain technology solutions that just aren’t needed, one that you absolutely cannot go without is data backup and disaster recovery. A business that doesn’t survive disasters can’t succeed, so if you want a future for your business, it’s important to invest now before you can’t later on.

Being in business today means that you have a lot on your plate, it’s as simple as that. Yet, with so many tasks piling up, it can be challenging to prioritize them all so you can figure out where to start. Below, we go over some strategies you can use to make sense out of all the tasks you have on your day and reach a point of productivity.

While not every business needs to worry about hurricanes, the same can’t be said for other kinds of disasters out there. Tornadoes, fires, and other natural disasters could strike at any moment depending on geographical location, but if you’re prepared, you can limit the influence these events have on your organization’s future.

Unless your business is a sole proprietorship, chances are you rely on employees in order to keep operations going. Your team needs to work together to make this happen as efficiently as possible, and a common goal helps motivate them toward this end. You can use collaboration technology to help your team do their jobs more effectively. This can have far-reaching benefits for both the performance of your employees and business operations in general.

Vendors can be impossible to deal with, and this problem escalates when you have quite a lot of them. Every service or product your business takes advantage of comes from a vendor, and if you have to work directly with them every time something goes awry, you’re looking at a lot of wasted time and effort. Thankfully, there’s an easier way to work with your vendors, and ironically, it involves not working with them at all--but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. There’s a process you need to go through before you can most efficiently take advantage of vendor management services.

It’s time to face facts; technology is advancing at a pace that it is difficult for even the most dedicated IT professional to keep up, let alone an owner/operator who is responsible for maintaining the entire business. There comes the point in which a choice has to be made as to priorities and what you’re going to focus your attention on. There are only so many hats one person can wear, without compromising the business’ growth and stability. As the saying goes, “When you try to do everything, you often get nothing done” in other words, it’s time to take off a hat.

When you’re making important decisions for your business, you need solid data to back them up. Through the use of business analytics, you can take advantage of your quantifiable data to find the right decisions for your business. We’ll discuss the process of using business analytics and how it can be used to your business’ advantage.

Commerce has been fully embraced by the Internet, with online stores slowly phasing out many brick-and-mortar establishments. While you may not be in too much danger, depending on what you offer, you may also have the opportunity to leverage this trend in your favor. Below, we’ve outlined a few factors to help you decide if e-commerce is the right fit for you.

You provide a good or service to your clients, and therefore, could be considered a vendor to them. Similarly, your organization depends on the goods and services of other organizations, making your business a client as well. All of this can become quite complicated and convoluted, which brings up the question of how you’re managing all of these loose ends. Are you keeping your vendors managed as well as you should be?

It takes a lot of work and determination to make a successful small business. There are countless parts that need to be managed and maintained--so many that it can be difficult to assign a priority at times. There are certain requirements that your organization must achieve in order to remain successful, but it takes a little more than just business savvy to keep your organization ahead of the game. Let’s take a look at some of the ways your business can make itself stand out and achieve success.

Technology is critical to the success of your business. You rely on it for productivity, efficiency, and security. Your organization can’t run as intended without constant access to important data and systems. If a business can’t afford to maintain and implement adequate technology solutions, they will often pay untrained employees to do what they can, but this comes with too many risks to be effective.

Data backup has the nasty misconception that it’s only worth having if you actually use it, but this isn’t necessarily the case. Businesses let this misconception get in the way of an important aspect of business continuity, simply because they don’t want to waste money on something that they won’t actually need. Little do they know that data backup is the only thing standing in the way of your organization failing forever.

A common misconception is that a workplace can’t be fun because it’s… well, work. This isn’t true, however, as there is considerable value that can come from implementing games in the workplace. Here are some of the more likely ways that your organization can benefit from some lighthearted fun in the office.

Every business will face a major technology problem at one time or another. Whether it is because your server just decided to quit on you, or you have received a not-so-friendly worded letter telling you to stop using a piece of software, managing technology for a whole organization is difficult. In cases like this, partnering with a managed service provider can be a real benefit. If you are going to choose to outsource some or all of your IT management to a provider, you will likely have to sign a service level agreement (SLA). Today, we look at the purpose of a SLA and how it works to benefit both parties of the agreement.

Should your next computer purchase be a desktop or a laptop? Let’s talk about the less obvious differences between the two so you can make the right decision when buying computers for your staff.

If you were considering increasing your investment into your information security in 2018, you certainly aren’t alone. Gartner released a report that indicated a considerable rise in plans to invest in key security considerations.

Identifying a qualified managed service provider can be challenging--especially if you don’t know what to look for. You should be able to gauge the worth of an IT provider based on a couple of key qualifications, just like you would if you were selecting an employee. What are some of the primary features that you want to look for in a managed service provider?

In the modern business setting, collaboration drives productivity. As a result, many software developers are producing software with collaboration in mind. Since these developers are all in competition with each other for market share, they are typically trying to build on more advanced features to outmaneuver the other companies. Some of the biggest names in the industry have recently updated their products to make collaboration a priority. This week we’ll take a look at updates made to Facebook Workplace, Gmail, and Slack.