XFER Blog

A.I. is one of those technologies that captivates the imagination with endless possibilities. You can’t turn your head these days without using something integrated with early artificial intelligence. Machine learning platforms, which are very rudimentary forms of A.I. are now being used to improve many of the tools a small business uses. Today, we will briefly go into what machine learning is and how small businesses are using it to their advantage.

The holiday season is upon us, and with it comes the spirit of gift giving. Your IT department would certainly appreciate receiving a few gifts of their own to dabble with over the next business year. We’ve compiled a list of the best technology you can get your IT department to save them both time and resources.

Telephones have been around for so long that nobody alive today lived in a time where they weren’t in use. While the general use for the telephone has remained the same, the major difference between older telephone systems and many of the telephone platforms available today is how they are deployed. Businesses have more options for telephone services today than they have ever had before, and with so many options at your disposal, we’re happy to help you weed out the right one for you.

It’s no secret that cloud computing has become a major part of what most small businesses’ operations. One aspect of business administration that many businesses keep in-house is their HR department. Today, we’ll take a look at HR and payroll software, and how moving your business’ human resources department to the cloud is a good solution.

Businesses these days rely on technology in order to function properly, but what happens when this technology doesn’t operate as intended? If your organization doesn’t have a dedicated help desk on-premise, you’re probably suffering from unnecessary downtime and technology troubles with no recourse.

As the technology that businesses have available to them develops, so does the propensity for this technology to be used unethically. This has become especially apparent where data collection is concerned, and what that data is used for after it has been collected. How can you keep operations moving both productively, and ethically?

There are various types of user accounts that your employees and administrators can use to access their workstations, but one of the biggest points of contention to consider when planning out data access is the use of administrator accounts. Specifically, you want to avoid handing out administrator account access to users like it’s Halloween candy.

Chances are you’ve encountered a couple of tech support scams in your days. These people frequently dial random numbers in an attempt to get the person on the end of the phone long enough to trust them with remoting into the device. These kinds of scams are designed to be as vague as possible, and since most people have computers that are at least a couple years old, they tend to experience some kind of sluggishness that makes them believe that something is genuinely wrong. This can turn out to be a grave mistake.

Your business depends on a budget to come out in the black at the end of the fiscal year, and the way you invest that budget will have a considerable impact. As you create this budget, your IT needs to be one of your top considerations - after all, it is what effectively powers the modern business. Here, we’ll discuss how diligently incorporating your IT into your budget can help your business be more successful down the line.

It’s always exciting when the idea of a business becomes real by finding a space to conduct operations. It’s extra exciting when a business has outgrown its space and has to move into a new space. Whatever situation you are encountering, it can be excruciatingly difficult to affordably move into new offices.

All businesses hope that they’ll never have to use their data backup and disaster recovery plan, but the point stands that each business should have one, just in case of a worst-case scenario. For a small business with a limited budget, the prospect of investing in a solution they might never need is daunting. To help you get started, we’ve put together a couple of basic backup practices that you should keep in mind for your business.

Your business deals with all types of troubles, but one trouble that can be extraordinarily costly is when your organization's technology doesn’t work properly. That’s why many businesses hire an IT staff who work to mitigate technology-related problems. One issue you should be cognizant of is cost. Typically, IT professionals have training, certifications, and experience and demand an above average salary. If you have a small or medium-sized business that is working with tight margins as it is, it can be extremely difficult to take on new personnel costs; especially ones that don’t directly result in bringing revenue through the door.

Data backup may not directly help you boost your productivity, but it is a core component of any responsible business’ continuity plan. Each year, thousands of businesses that don’t take threats into account are forced to close their doors because they didn’t have a contingency plan in place. For every business that plans for the worst there are two that don’t, either because they see the strategy as too cost prohibitive, or because they just don’t understand the amount of threats that could put their business in the position where they would need to close.

In recent years, employers have offered more ways for employees to customize how they see their work environment. These extra features can often go a long way toward improving their productivity and comfort in the office, but they are often held in check by the problems that such technology can create. A smart office was created with the purposes of keeping these technological shortcomings from crippling employee productivity.

Nothing lasts forever, especially not the technology that a business relies on to function. Between typical wear and tear and the always-improving trajectory that the technology industry follows, you will likely need to actively evaluate your needs and what you resultantly need to obtain. Today, we’ll walk you through how this technology assessment should be shaped.

One of the keys to launching any sort of technology initiative is to have a skilled IT project manager at the helm. As such, it is important to keep certain high standards in mind as you find someone to act in that capacity for your business. Today, we’ll review a few key traits that your IT project manager should exhibit.

Utilizing the data that you have acquired is a process that is referred to as business intelligence. Regardless of your business’ size, business intelligence solutions can deliver definite benefits. We’ll review a few of these benefits here.

Businesses exist to make money. Regardless of what that money is intended for, be it to sustain someone’s lifestyle or to bankroll a cause, a business will cease to be without an incoming cash flow. Unfortunately, unpaid invoices can make that cash flow stutter and slow to a trickle, and many businesses experience this problem as billed money doesn’t come in.

Technology management is one of the major issues that challenge small businesses. Do you know the various strengths and weaknesses of having an in-house IT department versus an outsourced IT provider? As a managed service provider ourselves, we’re in a unique position to help your business make an educated decision about the future of its IT management.

There are over 83 million millennials in the United States. That is one out of every four Americans; and, now the most populous generation of people in the U.S. are all of working age. It is not a surprise, then, to find out that there are more workers who were born between 1981 and 1997 in the United States than any other generation. Millions of new workers for the modern economy that continues to grow.