31478 Industrial Road Suite 200, Livonia, Michigan 48150 sales@xfer.com

XFER Blog

XFER Blog

XFER has been serving the Livonia area since 1994, providing IT Support such as technical helpdesk support, computer support, and consulting to small and medium-sized businesses.

3 Benefits that Make Software as a Service a Great Choice

3 Benefits that Make Software as a Service a Great Choice

Software is extremely important for businesses, so when you are creating the strategy and roster of applications you plan to use, you need to be smart about it. One way you can make the most out of your technology budget is to consider Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). With SaaS, your business can get the digital assets it needs at a price you can afford. Let’s discuss what makes SaaS so valuable for businesses. 

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How Small Businesses Can Use Logistics Services to Improve Operations

How Small Businesses Can Use Logistics Services to Improve Operations

Small manufacturers and distributors require a completely different set of conditions than your typical small business. Most small businesses just don’t have the resources at their disposal to properly address issues that surface. One way these organizations can improve the way they perform is through the use of a logistics platform.

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Tip of the Week: Organize Gmail Contacts Into Groups

Tip of the Week: Organize Gmail Contacts Into Groups

Have you ever tried using an email group? You might find that it helps you stay organized and efficient. Instead of sending a copy of an email to each and every recipient, you can basically create a “forum” of sorts to make collaboration easier than ever. You can do this through the groups feature in Gmail.

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Soon Enough, Android Will Let You Archive Apps Instead of Deleting Them

Soon Enough, Android Will Let You Archive Apps Instead of Deleting Them

Managing storage space on your Android device can be a bit of a challenge, but you can make it easier through the use of automatic app archiving. If you download apps frequently, then you might encounter situations where you have too little storage on your device, but this situation can be fixed with a quick auto-archive feature that will be available eventually for Android users.

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Is Remote Work Any More Environmentally Friendly Than In-Office?

Is Remote Work Any More Environmentally Friendly Than In-Office?

It isn’t uncommon to hear about how much working from home has environmental benefits—and on its face, this claim makes a lot of sense. We did have to wonder, however, how much greener remote work really is—if at all.

Let’s go into why the question of whether remote work is the environmentally friendly option isn’t as clear-cut as you might expect.

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Backup and Disaster Recovery is a Great Tool for Businesses

Backup and Disaster Recovery is a Great Tool for Businesses

The one thing about data backup is that it seems like it is pretty simple: You have data, you copy it and store it should something happen to your original. Sure, that’s the basic makeup of a data backup, but if you want a backup you can really rely on, you need it to be faultless. Enter Backup and Disaster Recovery. 

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What Really Happens When a Ransomware Attack Strikes?

What Really Happens When a Ransomware Attack Strikes?

Ransomware is perhaps the nastiest threat you can encounter, and the unprepared business could potentially be crippled beyond repair if it suffers from an attack like this. We’re here to demystify the inner machinations of a ransomware attack so you know better how to respond to it.

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Are Smartphones Productivity Tools or Distraction Disasters?

Are Smartphones Productivity Tools or Distraction Disasters?

We’ve all felt the momentary panic when we reach for our pocket to pull out our smartphone, only to realize that it’s not there. This panic is indicative of a deeper issue with how our society has become reliant on technology, so much so that we have miniature computers in our pockets at all times. Are you using your smartphone as a distraction tool or as a productivity tool? That’s what we’re trying to answer with today’s blog.

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Is Your IT Person Taking Care of These Mandatory Tasks?

Is Your IT Person Taking Care of These Mandatory Tasks?

As your business grows and shifts, managing your technology can become increasingly complicated. It can get to the point where properly taking care of your IT and supporting your users is a full time job. If you are just calling a computer person to come and fix problems when you bump into them, then you might have potential consequences to deal with later that could cost your organization a lot of time and money.

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How to Prioritize and Focus on the Tasks At Hand

How to Prioritize and Focus on the Tasks At Hand

When you have a lot of tasks to get done, you might find yourself stressing out about the sequencing or ruminating on your circumstances. How did you let it get so bad? Why does this always happen to you? If this sounds like an everyday occurrence for your organization or your employees, we want to share three ways you can help to make things easier to manage, even when it feels like there is just too much to handle.

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Using Your Browser’s Password Manager Is Poor Security Protocol

Using Your Browser’s Password Manager Is Poor Security Protocol

Many web browsers, like Google Chrome, have features that allow for convenient password-keeping, but at the cost of considerable cybersecurity risks. We recommend that all businesses utilize a password management tool, but preferably not one that is built into a web browser. Why? We’re glad you asked!

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Productivity Optimization Part Two - How It Can Be Measured

Productivity Optimization Part Two - How It Can Be Measured

Last week, we aimed our laser focus on productivity and how it can be defined for your organization. Now, we would like to examine how you can measure productivity for your business. Let’s discuss how you can track your productivity.

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Tip of the Week: How to Protect Your Company from Ransomware

Tip of the Week: How to Protect Your Company from Ransomware

Ransomware takes up a significant amount of our blog, and for good reason. It’s an incredibly scary threat to find yourself on the receiving end of, and modern businesses are, to be quite frank, often unprepared to handle it. We wanted to take today as an opportunity to discuss the negative effects you can expect from a ransomware attack—effects that will make you think twice about the current level of security on your infrastructure.

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Managing Your Staff Is Not as Easy as It Used to Be

Managing Your Staff Is Not as Easy as It Used to Be

With margins getting thinner for everyone, a lot of businesses have begun to outsource their human resources initiatives or cut them entirely. Unfortunately, for the business that has to slash their HR budget, situations can arise where issues turn into problems and if there is no one actively doing the HR job.

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Productivity Optimization Part One - Getting Started

Productivity Optimization Part One - Getting Started

Productivity will always be the primary goal for businesses, right alongside profits, although one thing does in fact lead to another in this case. To ensure your company runs efficiently, you need to understand just how productivity works and its relationship with what you put into your business. We’ll be using the next couple of weeks to take a closer look at the relationship between your business and its productivity.

First, let’s look at what productivity is, in its simplest and purest form.

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Are You Oversharing Your Personal Information?

Are You Oversharing Your Personal Information?

Businesses tend to collect and capture consumer data in an effort to provide a better experience or find new customers. Many of these businesses will package this information together and sell it to marketing companies. Consumers often don’t know how to opt out of this kind of activity and, thus, wind up oversharing information. This week, we want to highlight these issues and address how you can keep your personal data from being collected without your consent.

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Your New Hires Need to Understand Their Role in Maintaining an Efficient and Secure Workplace

Your New Hires Need to Understand Their Role in Maintaining an Efficient and Secure Workplace

Every organization that uses technology has policies and procedures that dictate the way that the people that work there have to deal with the technology that they give them. When you hire new employees, you need to be able to get them to understand that they have a significant role to play in the way that the business operates. Let’s go through some of the considerations you need to explain to your new employees so they can better understand how to interact with business technology. 

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Ransomware is Something That All Businesses Should Avoid

Ransomware is Something That All Businesses Should Avoid

Ransomware is a serious issue for businesses. How serious?

Think “$265 billion in costs by 2031” serious. In light of this, every organization needs to do everything possible to avoid falling victim to ransomware. Let’s touch on a few practices that will help.

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What You Need to Understand About Compliance

What You Need to Understand About Compliance

To meet compliance requirements for technology an organization will need to understand the regulations they operate under. New entrepreneurs may find it startling when they realize that they have a lot more people/organizations to answer to than they thought. This week, we aren’t going to go through individual regulations, but how IT generally fits into compliance and how not staying up to date can cost your business dearly.

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Tip of the Week: How to Create Multiple Google Calendars

Tip of the Week: How to Create Multiple Google Calendars

Your Google Calendar can be a gateway to productivity when it’s set up appropriately, and one way you can do so is to implement additional calendars to help you manage your day-to-day obligations. Let’s go over why you might consider using multiple Google calendars and how you can set them all up.

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