CoreTech Blog

Starting a small business is exciting, but keeping it running is the real challenge. Many businesses start with a great idea, a solid customer base, and high hopes, only to crash and burn because of avoidable mistakes. If you’re a small business owner or planning to become one, watch out for these three major pitfalls that can sink your business faster than you can say bankruptcy.

Welcome to the year 2025! 

Budgeting for your business IT needs has become increasingly complex. The rapid evolution of technology, coupled with the shift towards remote work and the increasing threat of cybersecurity has made IT a critical component of business operations.

Yet, many business owners struggle with IT budgeting. It's not just about allocating funds for hardware and software; it's about aligning IT spending with business goals and preparing for future needs.

We wrote this guide to help you navigate the complexities of IT budgeting. In it, we’re going to cover a wide range of topics and strategies that many business owners might not be thinking ahead about. Whether you're a business owner, an IT manager, or a financial officer, this guide will provide valuable insights.

So, let's dive in and start planning for a future-ready IT budget. One that not only supports your business operations but also drives innovation and growth.

By now, everyone is pretty aware of how cyberthreats can disrupt day-to-day life and cause a lot of trouble for businesses. This is especially true here in Nashville, as the last few years have seen multiple high-level attacks against local healthcare providers. 

A major problem with successful cyberattacks is that they tend to encourage more attacks in perpetuity. Healthcare providers have seen a staggering 264 percent increase in ransomware attacks over the last five years.

If we zoom out and look at small businesses in general, an overwhelming 85 percent of ransomware attacks target small businesses. These attacks tend to go unnoticed by the general population of Nashville, as they don’t affect as many customers or end up getting covered on the news. Still, cyberthreats can cause major disruptions to businesses and lead to extremely costly consequences.

It's time to buckle up and get serious about cybersecurity.

We’ve been getting this question a lot over the last few weeks, so we thought it would be a good idea to post a blog about it. As businesses renew their business insurance coverage, they’ve been getting asked more and more questions about their cybersecurity. Let’s talk about why this is, and how your organization can navigate this without losing coverage or having your insurance premiums increase.

“I don’t need to worry about cyberattacks… my business is too small to be of any interest.”

This brief rationalization is one of the most dangerous fallacies a modern business can make concerning cybersecurity, and shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how modern cyberthreats operate. If this has been your mindset, we urge you to read on so we can help set you on a more realistic path.

With technology being such a massive part of business today, many organizations are looking to use it to their advantage. One aspect of the business that is increasingly significant is their ability to stand out amongst their competition. Let’s take a look at a few technologies that can improve your organizational marketing efforts.

We’ve spent the last few weeks discussing ransomware's impacts on different subsets. First, we discussed how a ransomware attack impacts the customers of the infected business, and then we touched on the infected business itself. To end, we want to touch on ransomware's impacts on society, specifically regarding economic health and geopolitical security, known as third-order harms.

Last week, we discussed the many impacts your business suffering from ransomware has on “second-order harm,” downstream businesses, and average, ordinary people. This time, we wanted to return to “first-order harms”… those the impacted business has to deal with itself.

It can be too easy to look at ransomware as a business problem. After all, it attacks businesses, locking down their data for ransom, often selling it or spreading it, and sometimes altering it for the business if returning it at all. It can be too easy to overlook another impacted target in all the mess.

What happens to the people whose data a business has collected and uses?

Businesses need a certain degree of good fortune to continue to grow in the manner in which they project when they hang out their shingle. With so many businesses failing after a very short time, taking advantage of the opportunities you’re given is extremely important. In this month’s newsletter, we’ll go through some of the things that a business can do to take better advantage of some opportunities. 

The modern customer is more educated than ever before. As a result, you have to have an active strategy to build great customer experiences so you can retain business with them. In this month’s newsletter, we’ll go over some things you can do to improve your customer relationships. 

Professional services make up a significant portion of the business landscape. They can be broadly defined as any organization with trained professionals at the center offering a service of note. The most common professionals under this umbrella term are lawyers, agents, consultants, and others who help businesses in their day-to-day operations. Let’s explore some of the technology that fuels professional service providers.

Leadership can take many forms. As a leader in your own company, it can pay to understand what form of leadership you tend to express when working with your team. Let’s review some leadership styles to see if anything resonates.

This goes out to all the business owners, managers, department heads, and other leaders in the workplace who have to field user complaints and issues.

Being in this position can be hard, because you often have to say no. No, we can’t change the timeline or increase the budget for this project. No, we can’t do XYZ that way because it would break compliance. No, we can’t get new hardware/software in until we get it approved in the budget. Repeat ad nauseam.

How often does your company take it upon itself to ensure that those working for its success—your employees—are kept up to speed on cybersecurity? If your approach is to have your team sit in a room and watch a presentation once a year, it’s time to reconsider your training strategy. Let’s talk about the impact that proper cybersecurity training can have, and who tends to have access to it.

The cloud has enabled managed IT service providers, or MSPs, to fill a uniquely shaped void in many companies’ business models. Working with a managed service provider can make up for all of the traditional challenges of technology maintenance and management while also affording you unique opportunities to reduce costs, minimize waste, and maximize productivity.

It’s undeniable that software makes a business run. You need applications that support everything that you do, including managing schedules, time, and payroll, producing the work, and selling it to others. For this reason, software is an integral part of doing business.

Regardless of your industry, there are going to be certain regulatory standards that you will be responsible for upholding. Many of these standards will be related in some way to your cybersecurity. Let’s talk about some of these cybersecurity standards, and why compliance is so critical for your business.

We get it—nobody likes to think about the prospect of being impacted by a cybersecurity incident, but it’s like any other unpleasant event in that it is best to prepare for it. In fact, today’s businesses can invest in a cyber insurance policy to help prepare for such an eventuality.

Let’s go over some of the ins and outs of cyber insurance so that you are prepared to make the best choice of provider for your business.

Somehow, it’s December. Can you believe it? 

2023 is practically upon us, and hopefully by now you’ve started to put some thought into how your business will maneuver through the next 12 months. It’s important to establish an IT plan and budget, so that your technology can actually be a value center as opposed to an expense.