CoreTech Blog

Businesses of all sizes use varying degrees of technology to improve organizational productivity, efficiency, and security. The more a business depends on its data, the more crucial it is for them to manage and maintain the systems in which this data is dependent. For organizations that have a lack of financial resources to support these systems, it is often left to unqualified employees, putting your business at risk. What do you do when you need expertise that you lack and can’t afford to hire in-house staff?

It’s important to think about how your organization manages its technology, especially in a world where businesses depend heavily on critical software and hardware solutions to stay functioning. Granted, getting the technology assistance you need can be difficult with a limited budget and workforce. Managed services can be a great alternative to your organization hiring and managing its own IT department, and they can even be used to augment your current IT administrators.

There is no question that a small business can benefit from technology, as has been proven time and time again. However, an issue can arise if a business bites off more than it can chew, so to speak, and ultimately creates a spike in costs. A responsible business owner will resist this temptation and prioritize the solutions they need over the ones they want - building profitability and generating capital needed to make other improvements.

You might have only recently heard about outsourced IT services, but you might be surprised to hear that they have been around for far longer than you previously thought. Even before managed IT, however, business owners and individuals alike were using the outsourced services of others to simplify operations and day-to-day tasks related to their technology management.

As a modern business, your success depends on your technology functioning properly. As many businesses have discovered when their solutions did not function as intended, the effects can have considerable impact to their success rates. To help keep your business running, you need to be sure that your solutions are maintained.

As more and more businesses rely on technology solutions to accomplish their everyday tasks, there is a natural expectation for there to be a bit of a learning curve as these advanced solutions are prioritized and accounted for. However, a few industry research firms have compiled their expectations for how this learning curve tendency will influence the needs and challenges businesses will face during the rest of the year.

Technology has been ingrained into today’s society to the point where businesses can’t function without it. Your organization relies on servers, networks, and workstations to keep productive and access important information, but all of this technology saddles your business with the responsibility of maintaining the components, as well as budget challenges.

Running a business is hard. As a business owner, you know this better than anyone else. You have to juggle your assets, manage your workforce, and schedule out tasks to those who are most qualified. Yet, there will likely come a time when a task comes along that nobody within your business is qualified to perform. For many organizations, this task is IT management.

The truth is that outsourcing is a valid option for businesses these days, and it’s especially valuable for small businesses that have a limited budget or workforce. Some small businesses have trouble attracting and retaining top talent, especially in remote areas with a limited amount of talent to choose from in the first place. Others simply don’t have time to deal with routine maintenance, which will inevitably lead to broken technology.

One of the best ways to take advantage of outsourcing is for your organization’s technical needs, like IT management and maintenance. You started your business so that you could do what you love and turn a profit. If you’re focused on these goals rather than managing your technology 24/7, you’ll find that, all of a sudden, your dreams are within your grasp.

Besides, wouldn’t it be nice to know that your technology is being handled by professional technicians? You don’t want just any computer novice performing maintenance on your business’s IT. Information technology is difficult to handle at times, and failing to manage it properly can lead to disastrous results. If your company’s server were to fall victim to an untimely hardware failure, you could be looking at massive repair costs or replacement fees. That’s not even mentioning the irreplaceable data that was lost when the server went down. Unless you have support that’s ready and able to help at any given moment, these disasters could very well break your business and impede your progress further.

By outsourcing this need to CoreTech, you can essentially eliminate this uncertainty. By having us on standby and ready to assist you with your technology at all times, you can say "goodbye" to downtime and say “hello” to productivity. Even if you have an in-house team of technology professionals working to keep your workstations and servers working as intended, they likely don’t have enough time and resources to implement new and exciting technology solutions. We’re sure that your technicians could use a break from working around the clock, and you’ll appreciate having an extra set of eyes on issues that can prevent them from turning into major problems.

Our trusted technicians want to see you succeed, and they’ll work hard to make sure that it happens; that’s more than any ordinary break-fix IT company can offer. If your organization could use a hand with both technology management and implementing new solutions, give us a call at (270) 282-4926.

How often does your technology experience trouble? If your business is constantly dealing with technical hiccups, your assets that are meant to be a boon to your organization, can quickly become a nuisance that holds you back. How can you take better care of your technology, and use it to usher in a new era of productivity?

Your business relies on several software solutions that are designed to help your team be as productive as possible throughout the workday. In order to use these pieces of software, users often need to have a software license or an agreement with the developers. Without these software licenses, the legitimacy of the software is questioned and your team loses valuable time to be productive.

Risks Involved with Renewing Software Licenses
It’s important that all businesses have a solid plan to approach software licensing issues. This means taking an accurate assessment of the risks that are involved with managing software license problems. Here are three of the biggest culprits:

• Downtime: One of the most immediate issues associated with software licenses is that they can run out at any given moment, especially if you don’t take the initiative to renew them before they expire. Imagine this scenario: your team is working full-throttle to finish a project, but then the software is made unavailable because it’s no longer licensed. If this happens, your team could lose precious momentum while waiting for IT to resolve the issue. This wasted time translates to downtime, which has a negative effect on any strict budget.
• Shadow IT: In the above scenario, let’s say that your team doesn’t want to wait for IT to resolve the issue. This may cause them to look into alternative solutions that may not be approved by management. This is what’s known as shadow IT; solutions that are implemented without the proper oversight. When this happens, infrastructures could be put at risk of being compromised, while ignoring software licensing requirements.
• Legal issues: Employees may get the idea that they can find a illegal copy of the needed software online at a cheaper price (or free). While your employees may only be trying to help, their intentions are irrelevant, primarily because if they download a “discounted” or “free” version of a particular software on the Internet, it may not come from a legitimate source. In other words, you run the risk of your employees resolving the issue in a potentially illegal way. If your business is found to have a pirated copy of a software solutions, you could be subject to nasty fines that are easily avoidable. All it takes is an unexpected audit to completely drown your chances of success.

If your organization finds it difficult to handle software licenses, we’re here to tell you that there’s an easier way to manage your business’s mission-critical software solutions. With our remote management and maintenance solution, we can manually update your business’s crucial systems, making sure that they remain secure from potential threats. We can also arrange your software licenses in a way which lets you update them at around the same time. This way, you’ll never miss a critical update or software license renewal ever again.

For more information, give us a call at (270) 282-4926.

There was once a time when businesses would only seek out technological expertise when it was necessary. This would be when a major component was on its last leg, or if they required new technology following a major hardware failure. Today, a better type of IT service model allows businesses to avoid the downtime and unexpected support costs associated with broken technology, by practicing proactive maintenance.

The break-fix IT model is one that has simply lost its flavor in the business environment. Organizations are leveraging technology in previously unprecedented bulk, and are now more reliant on technology than they ever were before. They want a more dynamic solution that doesn’t rely on them investing heavily in new technology whenever something breaks down. That, and the increasing amount of efficiency and productivity that organizations demand, requires a more conscientious approach to managing their technology solutions.

Thus, managed IT services were born. Designed to proactively manage and maintain technology, the managed IT service model seeks to take a more active role in the upkeep of your business’s technology. In comparison, the break-fix IT model takes a reactive approach, only stepping in when major problems surface. Managed IT prevents the problems altogether by handling minor issues at their roots, preventing expensive downtime.

Here are some of the top reasons that small businesses are choosing managed services as a quality alternative to traditional break-fix IT solutions:

• Fewer capital costs: Technology is expensive. There’s no getting around this fact. Naturally, you want to replace your technology as little as possible due to the immense up-front costs of doing so. This means that you need to take exceptionally good care of your technology if you want to limit your expenses in the long run. Plus, the amount of money that you invest in your managed services agreement can be recorded as an operating expense, further mitigating your capital costs.
• Reduced management responsibility: One of the key benefits of the managed IT service model is that your business doesn’t need to spend as much time dealing with technology repair problems, and can instead focus on improving business operations. In other words, the responsibility of handling your technology is taken care of for you, so you can concentrate on what matters most: running your business.
• Quality technology maintenance: If your team doesn’t regularly handle IT maintenance, and you don’t have an internal IT department, chances are that your technology isn’t getting the attention it needs in order to stay up to date. By outsourcing this responsibility to a managed service provider, you can rest easy knowing that your IT is being handled by seasoned professionals.

If your business is ready to start handling your technology the smart way, give CoreTech a call at (270) 282-4926.