All posts by SystemsNet Administrator

5 Reasons to Outsource Your Business’ IT Work

Manage Service, , , ,
High angle shot of a group of outsourced IT agents working in an office

Outsourcing your IT department is cost effective, provides peace of mind that everything is getting done correctly, and allows you to concentrate on what you do best.

In the last twenty years, IT support has become absolutely mandatory for any business, no matter how small or niche. Your team uses computers, mobile devices, and a full stack of cloud-based software to streamline the work. Your website and server need to be secure and maintained. Your workplace internal network needs to be kept safe from hackers so that employee computers and client files are protected.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean that every business under the sun needs an on-staff IT team, or even just one IT employee. In an environment where IT is required for every type of business, it only makes sense that IT outsourcing has become incredibly popular. From network security to website management, many companies are bringing in IT when and where they are needed without worrying about hiring in-house.

Let’s take a closer look at five of the leading reasons why businesses choose to outsource their IT.

1) You Don’t Have Enough IT Work for a Full-Time Staff Member

A large number of small businesses, simply don’t have enough ongoing IT work to keep a single full-time IT professional busy. Once your tech stack is set up and your network is secure, you only need to be checked in on a few times a year and have someone to call in case of emergency. The vast majority of outsourced IT comes from small businesses who partner with contractable IT teams. This partnership works well because you only purchase as much IT support as your business needs. At the same time, the IT professionals get to stay busy by helping dozens of companies with their setup and troubleshooting tasks.

2) You Are a Startup Without a Plan for On-Staff IT Yet

Many a startup also choose to outsource their initial IT and may continue to outsource for a long time. Even highly technical startups who may eventually staff their own team of IT will outsource at the beginning in order to get that launching momentum. An independent IT team can help a startup set up their initial computers, software, and security so that they can start selling and worry about hiring a larger team in-house later when the revenue is right.

3) IT Hiring Competition is Fierce

You may also have noticed that IT professionals are in incredibly high demand, pushing up the hiring price and employment packages that are standard for each job title. Larger companies that are big enough for their own IT teams are clamoring to hire the technicians and admins available, but there just aren’t enough to go around.

So why worry about competing to hire your own IT professional when you can outsource from the independents who have opted out of the dedicated corporate support lifestyle? In fact, by offering outsourced IT, these teams are making sure there is enough IT support to go around even with a limited pool of technicians and admins.

4) In-House IT is Covered, But You Need Website Management

Another interesting variation are businesses that do already have an in-house IT professional or an entire team, but with needs beyond in-house IT tasks. On-staff IT may have your network security, backups, and software stack maintenance down-pat but the most common outsourced task is related to the website. In fact, any IT professional will tell you that website security and maintenance is a somewhat separate skillset from server, network, and internal software maintenance. So it makes sense to outsource for specific website needs or projects that are outside the ken of your on-staff team.

5) You Temporarily Need IT Specialists to Rebuild Your Software Stack or a Big Project

Finally, there are instances when you need outside IT support temporarily for some big technical undertaking. Rebuilding your software tech-stack, for example, is a huge task that your company or even on-staff It may not be comfortable tackling on your own. Large projects that are extremely time-consuming like data transfer or a super-sized backup recovery project can also lead businesses to temporarily hire outsourced IT support. This allows your regular IT maintenance team to keep providing their everyday support while the outsourced team handles the huge load of technical work that is only needed for a short time.

Is your company considering IT outsourcing for the long-term, for a special purpose, or to tackle an oversized technical project? We can help! Contact us today to find out more about how outsourced IT teams can enhance your business functionality, security, and efficiency based on your unique company needs.

VoIP’s Role in the Modern Telephony System

VOIP, , , ,
Portrait of contemporary adult man smiling while using laptop to video call using VoIP

Switching to VoIP adds tremendous flexibility to your organization that is not possible with traditional phone systems

VoIP. UC. PSTN. SIP. POTS. The acronyms associated with the telecommunications industry have become so prolific that it’s a challenge to just sort through all the clutter. Loosely interpreted jargon also contributes to the confusion. In this post, we’ll attempt to work through the clutter and simplify the myriad choices that are available for today’s business environment.

To simply understand how one product or service intertwines with another can lead to conniptions. Just knowing where to start is a challenge even for larger enterprises with a deep bench. For smaller businesses, the experience of selecting the system that best meets the company’s needs is often an exercise in sheer frustration. The best place to begin your journey through the telecom landscape is by boiling it all down to the basics and building from there.

VoIP Integration Into Modern Telephony Platforms

We all remember Plain Old Telephone Systems(POTS). Although still in limited use, POTS is a dying telephony model. Advancements in digital technology have made VoIP-based platforms the standard with more robust platforms such as Soft phones and Unified Communications (UC) suites. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages involving price, implementation, maintenance costs, ease of operation, and the platform’s capabilities.

VoIP Soft Phones- These are essentially a virtual phone system.  Usually, they are apps that appear on a computer screen and mimic the capabilities of more traditional phones via a computer screen

Advantages

  • Greater Performance Over POTS (Plain Old Telephone Systems)- Soft phones are more powerful and versatile than traditional landline phones.
  • Enables office to stay connected to off-premises employees and vendors via VoIP.
  • More user-friendly for workers in an office setting.

VoIP-enabled Unified Communications (UC) Systems is a category of “as a service” or “cloud” delivery mechanisms for enterprise communications.

Advantages

  • Better prioritization of Information- Due to its improved functionality, UC offers multiple ways to connect to staff. According to data gathered by Chadwick Martin Bailey, a research consulting firm, 49% of user organizations save up to 20 minutes per employee daily by reaching workers on the first try via a UC solution.
  • It offers more tools for enhanced productivity. The platform includes communication tools like IM, voicemail-to-email, shared calendars, and direct fax to an inbox, that helps to integrate and consolidate your data.
  • The platform is engineered to function as a centralized communication system.  This allows for phone calls, emails, video conferencing, calendars, and the like to be accessible on one system alone.
  • Makes it possible to receive phone calls through a mobile phone, and by sending and receiving copies of voicemails on the computer. Essentially, it can communicate through a number of iterations encompassing the IoT’s arsenal of tools.
  • It becomes a conduit of mobile technologies that can more easily be used to organize work groups and improve productivity on-premises and off-campus. This means that virtual conference calls can be an important tool in the process of doing business. UC also saves employees and other business associates a great deal of time and wasted effort.
  • Scalability- The platform grows with your business. The system is an ideal solution for growing companies.
  • Cloud Solutions-Allowing for a mobile workflow that enhances efficiencies and retains the new generation of workers. This allows for remote work, hot-desking, improved collaboration, and the ability to work from their mobile phones and phablets.
VoIP Driven CX (Customer Experience) Systems

A CX System is most often found in a call center environment. It is a closed-loop system that performs where customer management is the primary function.

Advantages

  • Improves Customer Satisfaction
  • Manages all customer-centric communications
  • Integrates with CRM platforms such as Salesforce (collect data, create business analytics, etc.)
  • Delivers an Omni-Channel customer experience
About SystemNet

SystemsNet is an certified provider of comprehensive IT managed services encompassing everything from on-site support to hardware and software implementation. Located in Horsham, PA, our service area stretches across the tri-state area including Berks, Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Lancaster, Montgomery, and Philadelphia counties. 

For more information on how SystemsNet can solve your IT issues, contact us.

Using VOIP to Optimize Your Interns and Seasonal Staff

VOIP, , , ,
Interns using VOIP

Quick setup for seasonal staff, temporary numbers, special queues, temporary routings, no problem!

Every industry has a busy season, of a sort. The holiday shopping season, the tax preparation season, the summer construction season; these are just a few examples. Some businesses fluctuate more than others, and many bring on seasonal staff to help tide over the busiest time of year. You may also be the type of business that occasionally welcomes interns, sponsors job training programs, and other types of temporary staff.

Of course, one of the biggest challenges of bringing on temporary staff, whether interns or seasonal, is the constant task of onboarding. Helping your new staff get adjusted to the office and dive into the workflow quickly is the key to optimizing your time with temporary staff members. And VOIP is the perfect aspect of your stack to make onboarding and integration a smooth process.

The Intern Number

If you bring on a set number of interns each year, every time they come in they occupy the same desks. They do the same tasks and they answer the same phones. One thing you can very easily do with VOIP is to set aside a special number, or set of numbers, just for the interns. This can keep your records clean and help your clients or vendors that work with the interns always calling the same numbers when it’s intern season.

Whether you have your interns calling vendors, performing customer service, taking care of follow-ups, or updating inventory; setting aside numbers for your interns means that interns can come and go but the job stays exactly the same.

Scale Up or Down with Seasonal Staff

Businesses that hire seasonal staff often find themselves investing in too many phone lines most of the year in order to have enough during the one part of the year when your staff size swells. But with VOIP, this isn’t necessary. VOIP scales easily with the size of your company, allowing you to reserve as many active lines as you need at any given time. When your staff is small during most of the year, you can pay for and manage only the phone lines you need. And when your seasonal staff members arrive to help carry you through the busy season, you can expand your plan to as many phone lines as you need.

This not only means that you save money and logistical time during the non-busy season, but also that you can scale to however many numbers you need if a particular year is especially busy. Then, if you hold onto some of your best seasonal workers by making them permanent, you can easily hold onto their lines and release the rest when the seasonal team moves on.

Fast and Smooth Onboarding Every Year

Finally, VOIP makes it incredibly easy to onboard new team members whenever they join and no matter how quickly they leave. VOIP communication platforms have team members automatically joining your phone network, chat network, and cloud communication. No need to worry about providing devices or asking your employees to use their personal numbers for BYOD workplaces. Whether you hire remotely, in-office, or your seasonal team members are out in the field, the VOIP number will work on whatever devices are used. No SIM cards, no new phone lines, and an easy-to-access platform that any new staff member can get the hang of quickly.

All they have to do is install the VOIP app on their phones, laptops, or tablets and they are instantly able to access their assigned phone number while keeping their personal contact information completely private.

VOIP is one of the best possible tools for any business that hosts interns or hires seasonal staff because it is so easy to scale and manage. Whether you keep a few numbers on the back-burner for interns or scale as-needed for impressive changes in staff-size throughout the year, VOIP is the key to smooth onboarding and efficient cost-effective cloud communication. If you’d like to explore how VOIP plans can scale with your seasonal staffing needs, contact us today!

4 Signs that There’s Malware Hiding on Your Work Computer

Anti-virus, Malware, Security, , , ,
Portrait of shocked and surprised IT manager realizing there is malware hiding on the work computer

Having a proactive plan to deal with malware can minimize the impact

Malware comes from everywhere. You can pick it up from files, websites, interesting PDFs and so much more. Everyone is subject to a little malware and it’s understood that professionals who must access the internet for work will inevitably get some kind of malware on their work computers. That’s just the world we live in now, and businesses have long since adapted to the idea of Backup Recovery when cybersecurity is never 100%.

But as a professional living your day-to-day, it’s also important to know how to identify malware when you pick it up. Unlike when the trend started back in the 90s, modern malware is pretty darn sneaky. It doesn’t cover your screen in ads anymore or obviously open and close programs. Instead, it eats your processor speed and steals your data in the background. Sometimes for months before you realize.

Today, we’re here to share four of the most tell-tale signs that there’s malware hiding on your work computer and it’s time to do a little BDR with a fresh operating system.

 

Unusually Slow Performance with Offline Programs

Internet speed ebbs and flows, even in the most high-speed office or the quietest residential neighborhood. You may expect the occasional slow performance due to internet speeds (or you may not) but slow offline programs are a completely different story.

You know your computer. You know how fast it can handle the offline programs you use regularly. Things that don’t need the internet like a simple calculator, word processor, or image editor. If you’re getting serious lag and latency when you should have your computer’s whole processing power to yourself, this can indicate that you’re sharing power with malware.

A malware program may be able to hide its install location or running processes. But it can’t hide the resources it uses up.

 

Unseen Programs that “Refuse to Close” When You Reboot

When you reboot your computer, Windows will tell you if there’s a program that didn’t close out smoothly with the ShutDown command. Often, this is just a Chrome browser you didn’t fully close. But sometimes, it’s a surprise. Your computer may tell you that Internet Explorer or Microsoft Edge are still running when you never use those programs. It might tell you something called xvb55t is running and won’t close, and that is a definite tip-off.

If something is opening programs invisibly on your computer and won’t close when you shut down… that’s malware. No two ways about it. And it’s time to fully wipe your system, because it’s hidden deep.

 

Your Web Extensions Aren’t Working as Expected

So often, web extensions are the cause or target of a malware attack. Most modern professionals run with some kind of ad blocker on. If you use Adblock plus, for example, it tends to pop open an extra tab nearly every time you open a new browser window. Especially from a new or recently cache-cleared device. If that browser window stops popping open, or if any of your other extensions start acting in an unusual or suspicious fashion, malware is often the cause.

You may want to clear your caches, prune your unused extensions, and possibly recover the entire computer to make sure no malware files have been hidden on your computer.

 

After a Scan/Clean/Reboot, You Still Scan Trackers

If you have a manual scanning program like CCleaner or something similar and you suspect there’s malware on your computer, there’s one sure way to check just how virulent that malware really is.

Start with a scan-clean cycle. Scan for trackers and junk and clear them. These could be anything and are often just clearing your temp files of web-junk that could be slowing you down. Reboot your computer, then do another scan. Find new trackers? Find new junk? There’s malware adding malicious crud to your computer as soon as it gets a chance. Also, watch your scanned-for and threat-eliminated results. If the scanner says 1 tracker was found, but it eliminated 3 trackers by the end-report, those trackers were added while the sweep-and-clear was ongoing.

You not only have malware, you have seriously aggressive malware and BDR is the best option.

Find malware on your computer? Have a really intense suspicion that there’s malware lurking? Now is the time to use your company’s backup recovery plan or get in touch with your IT help desk for guidance on how to fully wipe and safely restore your work computer. For more cybersecurity, backup recovery, and malware protection insights, contact us today!