One Up Solutions Northwest Blog

Businesses will often go into the process of self-improvement with unrealistic expectations for how much they can significantly improve their functionality. This simply is not true, and sometimes business owners need to realize that real change—the kind that yields real results—takes time. Thankfully, there are some actionable steps you can take to ensure that your business is moving in the right direction.

Having a professional perspective always helps, it’s just that in today’s world of inflated rates for everything, it’s hard to find experts that don’t charge an arm and a leg. IT consulting plays a crucial role in helping businesses gain a better perspective on their technology landscape. Here are several ways in which IT consulting can contribute to a more informed and strategic approach to technology within a business.

How does your business manage its IT? Do you have an in-house team, and how busy are they with all of the hustle and bustle of their everyday duties? Do they have time to address the many challenges and requests made of them? If not, then perhaps you should consider a different model for your IT management. Luckily, we have just the opportunity for you, and you won’t want to miss out on it.

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.

Digital transformation is projected to make huge waves in the business environment, with an anticipated value of approximately $767 billion by the year 2026. It’s clear that businesses have lofty ambitions and expectations for their digital transformation initiatives, but there is a shadow that is cast on this number that holds many companies back: many of these initiatives fail, and fail hard. Why is this the case? We explore these reasons in this month’s newsletter. 

Technology is one part of your business where you would rather take proactive measures than react to issues that pop up. After all, preventing some of the disasters and problems which surface could save you so much time and resources. Here are five of the best reasons why you should take a proactive approach to your business’ technology infrastructure.

Maintaining your business’ technology can be a lot to handle, particularly if you don’t have any IT staff members on hand to dedicate to its management. Managed services make this process a lot simpler, ensuring that (amongst other key benefits) your desktop solutions remain up-to-date and prepared for anything. Here are three basic tips to follow to ensure your desktops remain maintained.

Problems with your technology can often be spotted long before they become major time-consuming difficulties, but the catch with this statement is that you have to actively be looking for them in order to do so. If you want your business to remain profitable, you have to make sure that your technology is not wasting your business time or resources, and one way to do this is by actively monitoring your network for these issues.

How often do you find yourself in this situation? You are typing away on your computer pushing through your day-to-day tasks, scratching items off your to-do list, and communicating with your employees when suddenly, your computer freezes up. You’re then forced to perform a hard reset just to get your computer responsive again.

When you walk into most new businesses you’d be hard-pressed to think that IT has only been used in business for a few decades. Most businesses today use a variety of workstations (network endpoints) to handle scheduling, inventory, procurement, payroll, and a litany of other business functions. With that in mind, it stands to reason that keeping that IT working is the only way to efficiently run your business. We thought we’d take a look at how to keep your IT support costs low while keeping your technology managed properly. 

When you invest in a new technology solution, you might be wearing your rose-tinted glasses and expecting too much from the solution right out of the box. We all have expectations for what we want the solution to accomplish, but sometimes these expectations simply are not realistic. Let’s take a look at some common misconceptions people have about technology in the workplace, especially in regards to implementation.

Businesses have always relied on technology in at least some capacity, whether it’s hosting an email server or platform or using a word processor for various tasks. Many companies, however, struggle with technology procurement, management, and maintenance for a variety of reasons. Let’s take a look at what some of these reasons are, as well as how managed services can relieve these pressures to create a better experience for your company as a whole.

We throw the term “best practice” around a lot… enough that, without an appreciation for what the term actually means, it can start to sound like just another buzzword that the IT guy is using to sound more impressive. We assure you that this is not the case, and that the term “best practice” actually does mean something.

Whether you refer to them as clients or customers, the people who act as patrons to your business are essential to its success and survival. This means that you need to keep them as happy as possible. While there are many aspects of maintaining a high level of customer service, we wanted to take a bit of time to examine how deploying the right technology can assist your business in doing just that.

Businesses often struggle with finding talent, and a variety of factors can contribute to this. Some are limited by their geographic location, although this has been made significantly less of a factor thanks to remote technology, whereas others might be limited by budget. Thankfully, outsourcing is a great way to shore up weaknesses in your organization’s operations, particularly for finding IT talent.

Technology has made its way into nearly every business, especially in 2020 with all that has been going on. There really is no choice, but with the commitment to technology there comes risk. If technology fails, your business takes a step back. Today, we will discuss how managed IT services work to manage your risk and keep your IT running effectively. 

Your organization needs its technology to fuel its day-to-day operations. That means they need to be maintained. Organizations that don’t have an IT department will often look to use different strategies to ensure their IT is up and running. Without the proper expertise, however, keeping this technology maintained can be a major problem. 

While COVID-19 has largely dominated the public awareness and created huge shifts and interruptions to businesses of all sizes, small businesses have clearly been impacted the most--essential and non-essential businesses alike. Of course, this doesn’t mean that large enterprises and corporations aren’t also affected. The difference is, these enterprises and corporations are sometimes better equipped to do something about it… which many have.