Monthly Archives: June 2018

Six Ways Backups and Data Recovery Can Save Your Business (Part 1)

Backups and Data Recovery concept on laptop with business man drinking coffee

Having a plan is crucial to business survival

Data loss in the business world is not something to take lightly. Whether you save things on the cloud, on local company servers, or in personal devices, data is everything to a modern business. Every company has an impressive number of files to defend ranging from your own financial records to the regulation-protected personal information of your clients. Working with computers makes this vital data easy to collect, store, manage, and analyze but it also makes it more accessible and easier to destroy than paper documents. Fortunately, you can make sure your data is safe from both mistakes and attacks the same way you would with paperwork: with backups. When considering your backup and data recovery plan, it may help to think about all the things you might have to recover from. Your business needs a comprehensive business continuity plan is ideal and cloud-hosted backups are an important part of any contingency plan because they can help your business recover and survive through different kinds of disaster.

1. Failed Software Updates

Most businesses use some combination of business management software through which they run almost all internal data. An ERP to manage your assets and inventory, a CRM to store and track all your client and sales data, and your finance department’s preference of economic software all hold vital proprietary and personal information that is necessary for the company to continue functioning. You rely on this software to store your data and make sure to update regularly. However, sometimes an update goes sideways, causing partial or complete corruption of the data stored by the program. Instead of trying desperately to piece together the garbled database entries, a backup can simply bring back the program and all its data to its pre-updated state.

2. Loss of Service

Does your business rely on B2B SaaS services? If so, consider how much are you trusting them to keep important company data safe. Even if they are entirely reliable and trustworthy business partners, it’s a risk to put the responsibility for your data security on anyone else because you never know when the other company might face some massive interruption of service or loss of the data they store. While their services may be incredibly valuable to you, make sure that any important data being stored by another company is also backed up somewhere safe that you have control over. This way, if you suddenly lose access to your B2B services, your company can access its data and serve its own needs until your business partner gets back on their feet.

3. Your Own Mistakes

No long-term computer user has gone through the years completely mistake-free. We’ve all typed something in incorrectly, mis-clicked a menu-button, and slipped up right before an auto-save. Many of us have accidentally hit ‘save’ at the wrong moment or inadvertently copy-pasted over something that does not have an ‘undo’ function. In that moment of panic as you realize that important data has been permanently altered in error, having a complete recent backup is a huge relief. With a comprehensive data recovery system, you can quickly access the file you accidentally altered and be back to work in minutes instead of scrambling for a way to revert your changes.

A good backup and recovery plan is an incredibly important aspect of modern business. Everything from minor employee mistakes to hacker-inflicted destruction can be quickly and smoothly recovered from with the right layered backups and practiced recovery plans. Of course, this is only the first half of our two-part article. Join us for part two next time and we’ll talk about how backups can also help you in the face of ransomware, bugs, and device failures! For more information about how to build the right backups infrastructure for your business, contact us today!

Have You Made The Switch To VoIP In Your Call Center?

The businessman chooses VOIP button on the touch screen with a futuristic background .The concept VOIP

Are you ready to make the move?

If you are currently operating an in-house call center and you are still using legacy contact center solutions to perform all your communication tasks, we think it is time for you to rethink your situation. When you adopt Voice over Internet Protocol technology, you will immediately be able to notice the difference. Voice over Internet Protocol technology can do amazing things for your business and you will have the powerful tool you need to deliver outstanding customer service and functionalities to your call center.

VoIP services will provide you with the dependability, flexibility, and mobility you need to reach a high level success in the modern business world. A Voice over Internet Protocol solution will route the different voice communications over your internet connection. The solution will also use the same lines that can be merged on your utility bills.

Not only will Voice over Internet Protocol technology give you the opportunity to reduce costs, you will be provided with a variety of capabilities and features that you will not be able to get on the traditional phone systems you are currently using.

Monitoring Tools

If you want to make sure your call center agents are taking the proper approach when they are answering phone calls, you can use the reporting and monitoring tools to listen to conversations. When you hire new employees, you can also use these tools to give them an understanding of what the right approach should be. When you upgrade your communications to a Voice over Internet Protocol call center, you will be equipped with a variety of monitoring and reporting tools that will provide you with the data you need to serve your customers better.

On The Go(Mobility)

You will not have a strong call center if you do not have strong and productive employees. Your call center is going to need to retain your star employees for as long as possible. When you use Voice over Internet Protocol technology, you will be able to retain those employees even if they move or become remote workers. A hosted PBX solution will allow them to do everything they would do if they were actually in the office. Since calls are routed through the internet, your employees will be able to work from any location, as long as a strong internet connection exists. When you can create a great team of remote workers, you will have a strong and productive call center.

UC(Unified Communications)

When you have multiple ways to interact with your customers, they will be more likely to reach out to you because they will be able to contact you using a method they are comfortable with. The right cloud technology will allow you to integrate unified communications. When you properly integrate a Unified communications strategy, you will be able to use messaging, email, chat, social media, voice, and other communications methods to interact with customers. Not all customers are comfortable reaching out to business over the phone, but when you give them more communication options, they will be able to choose their preferred method of communication.

When your Voice over Internet Protocol is going to be provided by an outside supplier or vendor, you will need to make sure you will receive the best services. You are going to need a supplier and provider who will make sure your call center will stay online, even during outages or bad weather. Are you ready to always be there for your customers, especially during the times of the year when calls are constantly coming in? Do not hesitate to contact us today for more information on VoIP.

The Depths of Your Disaster Recovery Plan

Disaster Recovery Plan shown on a dart board next to a laptop

Disaster Recovery Plan is key to your business success.

Data disaster recovery is something that every business should be prepared for. Even if your company is never attacked by a hacker or has to face a ransomware system-wipe, it’s important to have a plan in case of pure technical failures and mistakes.  You, at the very least, want version backed up version control for your central systems so that a new employee can’t lose a client’s information by accidentally zeroing the values. The ability to retrieve active data from a day or a week ago is undeniably useful. Of course, backing up your CRM and financial data on a weekly basis is only scratching the surface your disaster recovery depth potential. In an ideal recovery, you would be able to completely factory-reset every computer and device on the company network and reinstall your infrastructure, programs, and data all from a single comprehensive backup kept on the cloud so that local disasters can’t reach it.

Of course, the most practical way to store your backups is based on how frequently they’ll need to be updated or accessed. Things like your operating systems, system configurations, and program installations will only need to be changed when your IT team changes the infrastructure. Then there are big databases including things like client information and inventory that will be accessed and updated all the time. These should have at least recent version control recovery available along with a few periodic older backups. Finally, there are the items you want incredibly tight control over and track every single change along with who made it.

Surface Changes

Active projects, customer service conversation, and anything having to do with money needs to be tracked much more closely than normal backup procedures account for. This is where finely tuned version control comes in. Whether it’s for security or simple collaborative convenience, the most surface-level form of backup are fast-paced changes, sometimes hundreds a day, and often it’s as important to know who made a change as the change itself. These detailed ‘saves’ of your data can be finalized at, say, midnight every night and archived after a week or two.

Document Management Software

While it’s true that digital documents like forms and contracts are technically data, there is a functional difference between your business data and your online documents. For these, you want a high-quality document management system or DMS for short. While your best bet is a system made specifically for the needs of your industry, Google Docs is a good example of a basic DMS. More specialized versions will have faster and more convenient mobile and online access, sorting, permissions, and even digital signature authorization for quick and easy approvals between clients and business partners.

Database Backups

The most standard form of backup is the sort that is taken on schedule, archived on schedule, and almost never thought about. For most people, this is their favorite kind of backup because it can take care of itself with a simple automated program directed at the files you want saved. The easiest thing to back up are databases like the sort that hold customer login data, account information, sales histories, department budget reports, and so on. With an easy to set up backup system, you can allow each authorized employee to designate the files they’d like backed up regularly every night, week, or month.

The purpose of these backups is the core of your restoration plan. In theory, as long as you have your databases and active files backed up, you will be able to restore your business data infrastructure from a complete reinstall of all your enterprise management software on new or factory reset computers with a minimal amount of lost data.

The Deep Infrastructure Backup

Every time you think you have a complete recovery backup plan, remember that technology and achievement rely on innovation. Ask yourself how it could be better, how recovery could be faster, and how you can ensure that no data is lost or damaged in the recovery. One important answer to this question is an infrastructure backup. Normal backups assume that you may have to reinstall your operating system and programs but that’s okay, right? After all, these should all be readily available to you. The problems is if you had special configuration settings to make your settings or automations run correctly, these are harder to get back into place in a timely manner and there’s a possibility your IT team doesn’t have notes on all the changes that will need to be made.

A neat trick to ensure that your recovery is fast and efficient is to do a periodic deep backup of any system that has custom settings or that you want to be brought back online quickly in order to get your employees back in the saddle even before the full recovery is complete. Besides your central systems and network setup, if you have large sets of computers that all run the same setup like customer service workstations, you can take a single backup and restore all the endpoints from there. Just make sure you update your deep backups every time the infrastructure or configurations change.

Recovering After a Disaster

The best thing about having a truly comprehensive backup and recovery plan is that you can theoretically recover every important system in the company quick enough to get your employees back online and your business humming again within hours of a disaster or setup afterward. Ransomware, for instance, that infects your entire network can be effectively eradicated with a full factory reset and a reinstall from the deep backup to the databases right up to the most recent surface changes. For more advice and news on backups and recovery, contact us today!

How Does Voice over IP Work?

Voice over IP, communication support, call center and customer service help desk

Voice Over IP

You’ve heard a lot about VoIP, or Voice over Internet Protocol. It saves money while giving you features that the traditional phone network can’t provide. But just what is it, really? How does it work?

The short answer is that it’s digitized sound sent over the Internet. A device at your end samples what you’re saying and converts it to bits. It gets bits back and converts them to sound. But what makes it useful is that you can treat it just like a phone call. You can call landline phones from your VoIP phone, and they can call you. You can make calls between phones from different manufacturers or use an application on your smartphone or desktop computer.

The office VoIP network

An office phone network, whether it’s based on traditional or VoIP technology, is called a private branch exchange or PBX. The Internet version is called an IPBX. Its central equipment can be in the office, in a remote data center, or in the cloud. VoIP phones are connected to the PBX over data connections such as Wi-Fi and Ethernet. Sometimes the phones use the same local network as the computers; sometimes they use a separate network for more consistent quality.

Either way, your phone converts what you say into data and sends it to the IPBX, which is really just a server running specialized software. If the equipment is based in your office, your call goes out onto the public telephone system when it leaves the building. If it’s cloud-based, your voice may travel almost the entire distance as data, saving the cost of a long-distance call.

The conversion to data uses compression techniques, so the bandwidth needed for one conversation isn’t very high. If an office has a lot of phones, though, it needs to have enough bandwidth to let many conversations keep up and should have a router with VoIP-friendly features.

You may have heard of VoIP phones referred to as SIP phones. SIP is one of two common protocols for making VoIP connections. The other is called H.323. The phone has to be compatible with the protocol your exchange uses, but phones from different manufacturers for the same protocol are interchangeable.

You don’t actually have to give up your old phone. Devices called Analog Telephone Adapters (ATAs) let you plug in one or more ordinary telephones and convert their audio signals to data. It’s less expensive than buying VoIP phones, but not all the features are available.

What happens when you make a call?

When you place a call, you might hear touch tones, but they’re just to give a sense of familiarity. The keys you press are converted to data, and the exchange determines whether you’re making an in-office call or outside call. If the call is within the IPBX’s area, it handles the whole connection. It isn’t restricted to voice data in this case; many IPBXs can carry video and documents as well. The ability to combine these is called “Unified Communication.”

If the call goes through a cloud-based service, it may emerge on the public telephone network only at a point local to the receiving party — possibly in another nation. If you’re calling another VoIP exchange, the call may not have to go over the public network at all. Sending data is very inexpensive, so VoIP calls cost much less than regular long-distance calls.

To get a clean-sounding conversation, you need an Internet connection that has enough bandwidth and will move the data along at a consistent speed. A poor connection may sound choppy, parts of the conversation may drop out, or you may hear an echo. Equipment which is designed to deliver “QoS” (quality of service) for voice data will reduce the incidence of problems.

If you want to learn more

Several websites have good introductions to VoIP for the non-technical reader. Here are a couple to look at:

Whatever you need to run on your network, SystemsNet keeps it running. Contact us for details.