If the last 25 years in the IT industry taught me one thing, it’s that people hate surprises, especially when it comes to ever-increasing technology spending. Yet it seems like your IT team always has their hand out to upgrade this or replace that. You’re left asking the same questions every time they ask to fund a new project: Why does this cost so much? How did we not see this coming? What do I need to do to make sure this doesn’t happen again? There isn’t necessarily a one size fits all answer to these questions. The ever-changing nature of technology means there will always be some surprises, especially when it comes to spending. But you can minimize surprises with effective IT planning and budgeting.

Your business isn’t just like anyone else’s. So, why would you work with vendors who claim to help everyone? You’re not everyone. You have specific things you’re trying to accomplish. You might be expanding into a different market, researching new products and services, or preparing to downsize as you approach retirement. Your service providers must align with where you’re trying to go. They must help you get closer to that goal. Otherwise, what are you paying them for? Innovative is a managed service provider. We handle everything in your business that plugs into a network jack (or has a wireless connection) – that’s your servers, computers, phones, printers, and copiers. By that description, it sounds like most any business could be a great Innovative client. But here’s the not-so-secret secret, anyone with some basic tech skills can install and troubleshoot computers, servers, phones, printers, and copiers (i.e., technology). Innovative’s value comes from helping businesses communicate better and generate more useful information (i.e., money-making information) with their technology. Long story short, it doesn’t make sense for you to hire us if technology can’t make a positive impact on your business and profitability.

The five areas to consider when choosing a managed service provider (MSP) are: Customer service. Product and service offerings. Organization and culture. Security practices. Account management. When your business outgrows the DIY approach to IT, you may consider outsourcing IT functions to a managed service provider (MSP). Or, maybe you've been working with an IT vendor who is no longer meeting your needs and you're ready to make a change. Once you've decided that managed IT services are the right option for managing your IT, how do you choose the best MSP partner? In this article, we'll walk through the five areas to consider when evaluating a potential managed service partner for your business. As a managed service provider, Innovative gets a lot of questions from businesses choosing an MSP. While we certainly follow MSP best practices, we're not the perfect fit for every business. For the remainder of this article, we'll remove ourselves from the equation and present an unbiased outline of how to evaluate a managed service provider.

Technology is one of the most vital forces in the business world. From your email and phone system to your payroll processing and invoicing, your business runs on many IT systems. Learning to accept new technology into your business is a must to keep your systems up to date and stay competitive. But just like anything else, we often fear the change of technology or the "unknown." Just hearing the word "change" is enough to make anyone cringe. Learning new habits can be daunting or exhausting. Why add anything else to our already busy lives? If something is working, why change it?

As a business owner, you have a lot on your mind as we all progress through the COVID-19 situation. Your workforce is probably broken up in ways you have never experienced before, and the way everyone is connecting to your resources may be less than ideal from a security perspective. This situation makes a comprehensive security awareness program more important than ever. A security awareness program promotes ownership of all employees over the safety of an organization's data and information systems. It also gives them skills to prevent and minimize data breaches and security incidents at the individual level. A comprehensive security awareness program includes three elements: Testing – Find out where your most significant security gaps lie. Training – Teach end-users how to identify and respond to suspicious emails. Reporting – Track improvements over time and identify areas for focus for the next round of testing and training. We are all doing what we have to do to survive this global pandemic, and security is taking a back seat for now. The problem is that now, more than ever, security needs to be a primary focus. Cyber-attacks are rising because criminals know that some of the typical defenses that businesses have in place are down or moved at the moment. In fact, FBI has reported a 400% increase in cyber-attacks during the pandemic.

It’s overwhelming when you need to replace one of the computers in your business. With the average computer needing replaced every three to five years, you’re likely looking at different specs and maybe even a new operating system than the one you’re replacing. This can be confusing on your end, and frustrating for the employee who’s been using the same computer for years. In this article, we’ll walk through how to choose the best computer for your business. Since the choices in computer models are infinite, we’ll focus on the to most popular business computer brands on the market, Dell and HP.

Are you or your staff practicing social distancing and working remotely in response to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak? We're all doing as much as we can to stay safe, which has meant making some quick decisions and quickly transitioning employees to work-from-home arrangements. Microsoft Teams is an incredibly powerful tool to continue collaboration and virtual face-to-face communication while your team works from the safety of their homes. If you're already using Microsoft Office 365, you may already have access to Teams and are maybe already using some of the features. Here is a brief video tutorial of some of the features we've found most useful as we at Innovative practice as much social distancing as possible.

You've been managing IT functions in your business on your own, or with some limited help. You're starting to feel like a more cohesive approach to IT could benefit your business. Your current "just fix it when it's broken" method isn't working. Managed IT services let you sleep better, knowing that an experienced business technology team is managing your IT infrastructure and systems. Managed IT services is the administration and oversight of the technology functions and infrastructure within your business by an outsourced, third-party provider, usually called a managed services provider (MSP). The most common managed IT services include: Network monitoring and management. Help desk support. On-site IT service. Remote tech support. IT consulting. Disaster recovery Data backup. Anti-virus and threat detection. Cloud solutions.

75% of small and mid-sized businesses report using some type of outsourced IT partner, and 39% are working with a managed service provider (MSP). [Source] Why are so many businesses seeing the need to outsource their IT? Of the businesses choosing to invest in a partnership with an MSP, what benefits do they see?

You’ve been working with an IT support company, freelancer, or managed service provider for a while. You like them. They’re great people. Maybe you’ve known them for years and they’ve helped you out of more than one bind. But lately, you’ve been feeling that things could be better. Your IT systems should be more in sync with your business. Your employees shouldn’t be dealing with nagging, unresolved problems. And your own, fairly new computer has been getting more sluggish by the day. Even on a good day when everything is working fine, you have a nagging gut feeling that the IT in your business isn’t great. You don’t even want to think about what might happen on a bad day when your server crashes or you get hit with a ransomware attack.