Top 6 mistakes to avoid when adopting cloud technology

Cloud computing is undoubtedly one of the most useful technologies today. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, cloud-based solutions and services enabled companies to operate efficiently and effectively even with remote workforces.

However, when done haphazardly, cloud adoption can expose your business to various pitfalls, including uncontrolled costs and cybersecurity risks. Here are the top mistakes to avoid when adopting cloud technology for your business:

1. Allocating insufficient bandwidth

If your internet bandwidth cannot accommodate the number of cloud users in your company, your cloud apps will inevitably slow down. This sluggish performance will result in lowered staff productivity, delayed projects, and frustrated stakeholders.

When allocating internet bandwidth, you must also take into account possible spikes in the number of cloud users, which may occur during business-critical events such as product launches and seasonal promotions. Also, consider your employees’ cloud usage. For instance, tasks that require activities like streaming videos or processing large files use more bandwidth than emailing or web surfing.

2.Mindlessly migrating all your business apps

Not all applications are suited for migration. Some are too complex and may require re-coding, while others are built on legacy systems that are incompatible with migration or other cloud-based applications. Such apps are often best replaced or left on premises.

Prior to cloud migration, assess which among your applications and data can be migrated and which ones must be left as is. Doing so will help you avoid extra costs, misconfigurations, and other headaches in the long run.

3.Ignoring the service level agreement (SLA)

The SLA is a contract between you and your cloud service provider (CSP). It details everything you can expect from your CSP and their services, such as uptime rates, disaster recovery, and data security, among others. The SLA also provides information about fees and other financial implications.

Before signing up for a cloud service, go over the SLA carefully. If there are provisions or technical jargon that you don’t understand, ask your CSP to explain them. Beware of vendor lock-ins, as these may force you to pay additional fees just so you could use your desired cloud solutions.

4.Forgetting to set a goal

Cloud adoption can have significant ramifications for your business, so each step in the process counts. One simple but crucial step you can’t neglect is identifying what you want to achieve from the migration in the first place. Do you want to improve your business’s flexibility or augment its cybersecurity? Or are you looking to save money?

When you understand your goals, you can better assess which cloud services, solutions, and providers will work best for your business. You can also develop clear success metrics to track your progress and ensure that you’re getting the most out of the migration.

Cloud adoption can have significant ramifications for your business, so each step in the process counts.

5.Neglecting cybersecurity

Your CSP must implement the necessary precautions to protect your business’s data. These include enterprise-grade anti-malware solutions, firewalls, encryption, intrusion detection systems, and more. Your CSP must also conduct regular testing to ensure that their security measures are always up to par.

Keep in mind, though, that these measures are only half of the equation. Research reveals that over 80% of data breaches involve user error, so you and your staff will have to do your part as well. Train your staff in cybersecurity best practices so they know what to do and what not to do in order to protect your cloud data.

6.Not accounting for failure

For all its sophistication, cloud technology is far from perfect. Cloud servers may experience outages and cyber incidents. Your business can suffer downtime because of such events.

Therefore, it’s not enough that you implement measures to prevent impending disasters — you also have to be prepared for when disasters strike. Setting up redundancies like data and server backups, for instance, will ensure that your apps and files remain recoverable after outages and cyberattacks. These measures will allow you to quickly resume business operations and avoid costly downtime.

Cloud adoption can be very rewarding for your business, especially when done correctly. At [company_short], our IT experts can assist you in every step of the cloud adoption process, from planning to migration and beyond. Start your cloud adoption journey by contacting us today.

What business processes should you automate?

Automation is the use of machines, control systems, and information technologies to minimize or eliminate the need for human intervention in tasks that have traditionally been performed by people. It can improve the efficiency, accuracy, and speed of completing crucial business processes, enhancing your company’s productivity and freeing up your employee’s time for more value-added tasks.

Over the years, it has become possible to automate nearly any business process, from customer management to inventory control. Which business process you should automate depends on your company’s specific needs, but the following are a great start:

Managing your sales process

Increasing the number of paying customers is essential to your business’s revenue, but it’s a delicate process. After generating leads, you need to nurture and follow up with them without pushing too hard or bombarding them with too much information. If the sales process isn’t managed correctly, it can result in plenty of wasted resources and a high customer churn rate.

With sales automation software, you can keep track of your leads’ positions and movements in the sales funnel. This allows you to respond accordingly by providing the right information at the ideal time, increasing your chances of successfully closing deals.

For instance, after a potential customer has completed a contact form on your website, the sales automation software can automatically send a prewritten response. This message is a great way to reassure the customer that their message reached your company.

The software can then instruct your sales reps to get in touch with the lead. After the sales rep has talked to the potential customer, the software will move this lead to the next step of the sales funnel. If contact is not successful, the software can send an email asking the prospect when they’d be available for a follow-up call.

Based on how leads engage with your sales reps, the automation software can determine the potential customer’s level of interest and how likely they are to convert. This enables you to reliably prioritize prospects by their readiness to purchase, eliminating guesswork and the risk of wasting resources and the sales team’s effort.

Automation can improve the efficiency, accuracy, and speed of completing crucial business processes, enhancing your company’s productivity and freeing up your employee’s time for more value-added tasks.

Sending online purchase reminders

It’s much easier to sell to an existing customer than a new one because they’re already familiar with your product. After a customer has made a purchase, it’s important to keep in touch and nurture the relationship to ensure customer loyalty and repeat business.

One way to do this is by sending automated reminder emails for items that need to be replaced or refilled. For example, if a customer bought from you a product that’s good for two months, you can set up an automated email reminding them to buy refills 60 days after their purchase. This is a great way to keep your business top of mind and increase the chances that customers will come back to you when they need to restock.

In case customers add your products to their cart but forget to check out, you can also set up automated emails reminding them to complete their purchase. This way, you can reduce lost sales and boost your business’s revenue.

Conducting email marketing campaigns

Email marketing campaigns are among the most commonly used marketing strategies because they’re highly effective, relatively easy, and inexpensive. With automation, you can manage your entire email marketing campaign from start to finish without having to lift a finger.

Automated email marketing software can segment your email list through a wide range of demographic and psychographic details. This increases the accuracy of your targeting, enabling you to send messages that are relevant to your customers.

Email automation software can also send different follow-up emails depending on how the recipient responded to the last message they received. This is essential to building meaningful relationships with clients, improving your ability to build customer loyalty.

Managing social media accounts

Social media is a great platform for engaging with your customers, posting updates, and increasing your brand’s visibility. A social media automation tool reduces the amount of manual work needed for launching and maintaining campaigns. This includes scheduling posts and distributing these across social networks, blog sites, and other web-based platforms.

Automation can also help with handling private messages. For instance, you can leverage chatbots to narrow down a customer’s concerns or answer commonly asked questions.

Automation can do wonders for your business, provided you know which business processes to automate. If you need help finding the right automation solution or making the most out of your existing tools, turn to [company_short]’s IT experts. Call us today to get more information.

3 Tips to help you avoid collaboration app overload

Collaboration apps are crucial to modern teams, especially since many businesses have switched to flexible working arrangements. With these apps, team members can keep track of deadlines, share files, and communicate and collaborate with one another seamlessly from anywhere.

Most collaboration apps have become Swiss Army knives of productivity for organizations in virtually any industry, and their capabilities keep expanding over the years. However, it’s not uncommon for companies to utilize more than one of these at the same time to manage different branches, departments, or projects. Unfortunately, such a strategy — if not managed properly — can lead to a problem known as collaboration app overload.

What is collaboration app overload?

Collaboration app overload happens when employees become too busy juggling multiple collaboration platforms that they can no longer focus on their tasks, causing their productivity to dip. When this becomes a daily problem, employees may start to feel burnt out.

Moreover, collaboration app overload can lead to the creation of information silos. When different departments or teams are using different collaboration apps, the data shared within each app becomes siloed off from the others. This makes it difficult for employees to access the information they need, when they need it, disrupting workflows and productivity.

How can you avoid collaboration app overload?

The following tips can help you prevent collaboration app overload:

Evaluate what your business needs

Just because a collaboration app has impressive features doesn’t mean it’s the best one for your team. If the app doesn’t match your business’s requirements, you may end up turning to other software to compensate for its misgivings, resulting in collaboration app overload. Alternatively, your employees might use unvetted collaboration tools, leading to shadow IT and creating even more inefficiencies and security vulnerabilities for your company.

Before investing in a collaboration app, make sure you understand your business’s needs and your employees’ preferences. Ask for input from your IT department and the rest of your staff. Doing this will help you choose one or two tools that actually help your team get things done.

Audit the apps you’re currently using

Create a list of all the collaboration apps your company is currently using to identify any poignant trends and issues. For instance, each department in your organization may be using a different collaboration solution, even though these tools have similar and overlapping features. It could also be that some of the tools on the list are being underutilized or are no longer being used by your team.

Auditing your company’s collaboration apps gives you a better idea of which ones to let go of and which to keep. This will declutter your software ecosystem, making it easier for your employees to focus on their work instead of trying to figure out which collaboration app to use for a specific task.

Consolidate your company’s tools

Some of the top collaboration solutions on the market can do the work of several separate applications. Consider taking stock of your company’s tools and replacing those with the same capabilities as these feature-rich collaboration applications. Not only will doing so create a more focused software ecosystem and enable your employees to find the information they need more easily, but it can also help you save a lot of money.

Take Microsoft Teams, for instance. It has everything you need for both collaboration and communication, including chat, voice and video calls, file sharing, and even project management capabilities. Teams also supports external sharing, which is extremely handy for collaborating with Microsoft 365 subscribers outside your organization, such as clients and vendors. Additionally, it integrates seamlessly with other applications, both those created by Microsoft and by other developers.

To effectively prevent collaboration app overload, you need to really understand what your business needs. Seek your IT team’s help or turn to a managed IT services provider like [company_short]. Our IT experts will help you audit your organization’s requirements and the apps in your portfolio. We will also recommend the best collaboration apps that truly contribute to your business’s goals. Reach out to our IT specialists today to get started.

Digital skills that are most important for a smooth-running hybrid work setup

In a hybrid work setup, employees have the freedom to work either remotely or in the office. When implemented correctly, this arrangement not only helps companies save money, but can also improve employee morale and productivity. To implement a successful hybrid working setup, it’s critical that your company uses the right tools and that your employees develop appropriate digital skills. In this blog, we’ll discuss the most important digital skills for hybrid working.

What are digital skills?

Digital skills refer to abilities related to leveraging computing and communication solutions in order to learn, obtain, manage, and share digital information. A few years ago, these abilities were considered to be quite specialized. But with the increasing adoption of IT in business, digital skills are now a standard requirement in virtually every industry.

No hybrid work setup is possible without digital technologies like project management apps, video conferencing services, and collaboration tools. It’s only when they possess the right digital skills that your hybrid staff can use and make the most of these technologies.

What digital skills are essential for hybrid work?

To ensure the success of your hybrid work arrangement, your employees need to develop the following digital skills:

Digital literacy

Your staff must know how to use digital devices and tools to achieve their desired outcomes. This means being able to write and send emails, operate computers and smartphones, and search for information online, among other activities related to their jobs. With strong digital literacy skills, your hybrid employees can be productive whether they’re working in or outside the office.

Adaptability

Hybrid workers need to periodically switch between two or more workplace environments. This means they must be able to adjust their habits and work methods based on the task at hand and whether they’re working remotely or in the office. For example, an employee who’s used to working in the office may need to learn how to collaborate seamlessly with teammates while working remotely.

Communication

Hybrid workers must be able to communicate effectively using different tools and mediums and regardless of their location. For instance, they must know how to express themselves and understand instructions whether through text, audio, or video, or a combination of these at the same time. They must also be able to deliver presentations and explain concepts virtually.

Time management

In many cases, hybrid employees work without a fixed daily schedule. Although this gives them the freedom to work at a comfortable pace, it can also lead to procrastination and a lot of unfinished tasks. Hybrid workers must, therefore, know how to set goals and manage their time wisely. This involves using digital tools like project management apps to keep track of their deliverables and break down large tasks into smaller, more manageable ones.

Cybersecurity

Remote workers usually do not have access to the enterprise-grade cybersecurity solutions that protect office workers and IT systems. For this reason, it’s not surprising that when companies began adopting flexible working arrangements in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, cybercrime rates jumped by 300%. And cybercriminals likely won’t stop targeting remote workers anytime soon.

Because of this, hybrid workers’ skillset must include the knowledge of and ability to follow cybersecurity best practices. This means knowing how to create strong passwords, update business apps, and back up sensitive data, among other measures. They must also be able to identify common cyberthreats like phishing and know how to effectively respond to these. Your company should have all employees undergo cybersecurity awareness training to ensure that they possess these skills and knowledge.

The right digital skills can help your remote employees be productive and secure no matter where they work. If you want to further boost your company’s cybersecurity, you should partner with [company_short]. Our IT experts can train your hybrid teams on cybersecurity best practices and recommend solutions to make your hybrid work setup succeed. Contact us today to get started.

Everything you need to know about privilege escalation threats

Today’s IT systems are designed to support multiple user accounts, each of which provides the user with a specific set of abilities called privileges. These privileges may include accessing certain hardware or applications, viewing or editing files, and making modifications to the IT system. High-level privileges, such as those held by IT administrators, often provide greater access and control over the system than lower-tier privileges, such as those given to guest users, do.

What is privilege escalation?

In privilege escalation, an attacker exploits errors, vulnerabilities, and configuration oversights in an operating system to access IT resources and areas beyond what their privileges normally allow. For instance, cybercriminals who have stolen a low-level employee’s user account credentials can use privilege escalation techniques to gain abilities reserved only for members of the company’s IT team.

Privilege escalation is rarely the end goal for cybercriminals — rather, it is often one of the initial steps toward various malicious activities. When successful, it gives crooks greater control over the victim’s IT system, enabling them to access sensitive data and disable key security measures. They can then more easily plant malware, commit data theft, and launch more specific cyberattacks.

There are two types of privilege escalation, namely vertical and horizontal. Vertical privilege escalation involves someone with low-level privileges attempting to gain higher ones. Horizontal privilege escalation, on the other hand, involves someone with high-tier privileges trying to access company resources that are outside their normal area of responsibility. For instance, a cybercriminal may use IT admin privileges to access the company’s bank accounts.

Privilege escalation is rarely the end goal for cybercriminals — rather, it is often one of the initial steps toward various malicious activities.

How can you prevent privilege escalation?

Preventing privilege escalation can save your company from the reputational and financial damage caused by cyberattacks. To do this, you will need a two-layered approach that addresses the various privilege escalation techniques used by cybercriminals.

Layer 1: Employees/Users

In many cases, cybercriminals must first gain access to your employees’ credentials. You can address this risk with the following steps:

1. Enforce the principle of least privilege

Give your employees access to only the specific resources they need to accomplish their tasks. For example, HR staff should not be able to reconfigure IT security. This limits the amount of data that cybercriminals can access and prevents them from easily moving laterally across your network.

2. Implement password best practices

Sometimes, cybercriminals can steal user accounts by simply guessing the owner’s password. Prevent this by requiring your staff to follow password best practices, including:

Creating passwords that are at least 12 characters long and composed of letters, numbers, and special characters
Using a unique password for each of their online accounts
Never keeping their passwords in notebooks, memo pads, word and text documents, and other media that can be easily seen or stolen

You can also use password managers like LastPass and Dashlane to make creating, storing, and updating passwords easier. To further boost account security, implement multifactor authentication where possible. This requires users to submit several proofs of their identity before they can enter online accounts or access resources, preventing cybercriminals from getting far across your network even with stolen passwords.

3. Train your staff

Cybersecurity awareness training can help your staff avoid mistakes that can lead to cyber incidents and turns them into valuable assets for your company’s cybersecurity.

Layer 2: Applications

Cybercriminals may also exploit vulnerabilities in your business applications to infiltrate your network. You can address this risk through the following methods:

1. Update your applications regularly

Software manufacturers typically release patches for errors, bugs, and security vulnerabilities in their products. You should install these updates the moment they become available to prevent cybercriminals from abusing these flaws at your company’s expense.

2. Review and correct permissions

Make sure that the access permissions on all of your company’s files, directories, and servers can be accessed only by the right users.

3. Remove unused user accounts

Regularly audit current user accounts and delete those created for former employees. Unused accounts can be used by cybercriminals as entry points and may also be utilized for insider attacks.

Privilege escalation is a complex issue that poses immense risk to your organization. At [company_short], our cybersecurity specialists can help by uncovering weaknesses in your IT infrastructure and developing strategies to effectively address these. Start taking steps against privilege escalation by contacting our IT experts today.

How does Dynamics 365 Sales enhance your sales process?

The sales process is a crucial but delicate step toward securing revenue for your business. This process involves generating and qualifying leads, which you can convert into paying customers if you nurture them properly. To do all these, you need a way to organize your leads and keep track of their information.

Some business owners collate information about their leads using a spreadsheet, but this approach works only up to a certain extent. As the number of your leads increases, it becomes more difficult to manage and organize information in a way that offers maximum insight about each potential customer. For this reason, you need a powerful tool like Dynamics 365.

What is Dynamics 365?

Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a cloud-based business application that features customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) capabilities, as well as artificial intelligence tools. CRM refers to solutions that keep track of information about potential and existing customers so businesses can start and foster meaningful relationships with them. ERP, on the other hand, is a set of solutions that automate processes and provide insights about the business using information collected from the different segments of the company.

What are the benefits of Dynamics 365 Sales?

Dynamics 365 Sales was built with salespeople in mind. It enables businesses to manage the different steps of the sales process, as well as gauge the outcomes of their endeavors using a single solution. With Dynamics 365 Sales, your sales team can:

Easily move data

Some businesses use disparate systems to collect, process, and store lead data. Unfortunately, moving information across different platforms can be a frustratingly repetitive process. There’s also the risk that your data will become disorganized when transferred to a system that’s not 100% compatible with the system of origin. Moving and reorganizing can lead to plenty of time lost — time that your salespeople could have used to nurture leads.

Dynamics 365 Sales enables you to import lead information individually or in batches. You can also activate its always-on connection to MS Excel. This way, if you use Excel to collect data, any information on your spreadsheet will be automatically imported to Dynamics 365.

Boost telemarketing outcomes

Just because you’re talking to your leads doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed to convert them. Dynamics 365 Sales can bolster the results of your telemarketing efforts through its process flow user interface. This sends you prompts on which questions to ask and points to raise as you talk to potential customers on the phone. The prompts follow a logical progression from qualifying to converting leads, so you get a higher chance of securing new paying customers.

Track leads by stage

There are appropriate topics to cover and ways to converse with leads depending on which stage of the sales funnel they are in. For instance, those in the Awareness stage would appreciate information about their problem and possible solutions, while those in the Desire stage should know your products’ edge over your competitors.

Dynamics 365 Sales lets you define a series of stages based on the sales funnel. You can assign milestones to each stage, and only after a lead has satisfied all the milestones in a stage can they move to the next one. This helps you accurately track your lead’s position in the funnel and provide them with the necessary information and push toward actual conversion.

Keep track of your competitors

To succeed in business, you also have to pay attention to your competitors and what they’re doing right. This way, you can find ways to make their success work for your company also.

Dynamics 365 allows you to create accurate profiles of your competitors. These profiles may include their strengths, weaknesses, sales opportunities, and even the areas you’re competing in.

Score leads automatically

Some leads are more likely to become paying customers than others. You can score each lead depending on how close they are to the buying stage, so you know which ones need the most nurturing. However, scoring leads can be difficult to do if you’re dealing with hundreds or thousands of potential customers every month.

Dynamics 365 Sales allows you to develop rules for identifying a certain lead’s readiness to convert. The application will then examine each lead and automatically give them a score based on the rules you created, saving you a lot of time and energy as a result.

Optimizing your sales process using Dynamics 365 Sales can dramatically simplify your salespeople’s jobs and improve your company’s revenue. At [company_short], our experts can help you get familiar with Dynamics 365’s features so you can get the most out of this powerful tool. We can also recommend other solutions that can help boost your business’s bottom line. Talk to our IT experts today.

What are the risks and benefits of a BYOD setup?

In a bring your own device (BYOD) arrangement, employees use their personal computers or smartphones to perform their tasks. This setup became especially popular during the COVID-19 pandemic when many workers were forced to work from home. If you want to successfully implement a BYOD arrangement in your company, then you must first understand and address the risks it could pose.

What are the risks of a BYOD setup?

There are several reasons why many business owners hesitate to adopt BYOD arrangements.

Cybersecurity risks

Allowing your staff to use their personal devices to access and process critical business data can increase your risk of data breach and loss. This is because, unlike office devices that are equipped with enterprise-grade cybersecurity tools, your employees’ personal devices likely only have free security software, if at all.

To resolve these issues, require your staff to install anti-malware software on all personal devices they use for work. Your staff should also create a separate user account on their device specifically for work purposes. You can then use mobile device management (MDM) solutions to take control of and secure work accounts without intruding on how your employees use their devices outside work hours. To ensure that you’re on the right track, ask our experts at [company_short] for BYOD security best practices you should implement

Lack of control

You have little to no control over how personal devices are used beyond work hours. That is, your staff could be using their devices to visit malware-laden websites or download potentially dangerous files. They may also be connecting to unsecured networks, such as free public Wi-Fi, putting their own and your company’s privacy at risk.

Resolve this issue by developing and implementing acceptable use policies that define which applications and assets your employees may access using their personal devices. At the same time, train your employees on good digital hygiene practices, such as avoiding suspicious networks, files, and websites.

What are the benefits of BYOD?

Addressing the risks of BYOD will help your company reap the following benefits:

Increased productivity

Many people know their personal devices like the back of their hands. They understand their gadgets’ capabilities and can even troubleshoot minor issues, and these devices are configured to suit their users’ preferences and habits. Because of these, workers are very comfortable when using their personal devices for work and can be more efficient when doing so than if they were using relatively unfamiliar company-issued hardware.

Enhanced flexibility

Your employees likely have their smartphones or laptops with them all the time. If your company is following a BYOD setup, this means your staff can work on their tasks wherever they are. Flexible working arrangements can keep your employees safe during dangerous times (like during a pandemic) and allow them to work where they are most comfortable. This is why flexibility is such an important perk, especially for younger workers.

Great savings

Issuing work devices can cost your company a lot of money. You’ll need to pay for the machines themselves, as well as the licenses for all the applications and tools that will be run on those devices. Additionally, your company will have to shoulder the cost of troubleshooting, maintaining, upgrading, and updating both hardware and software, not to mention utilities, space, and other associated expenses. Even with only 10 employees, each with their own work devices, you could lose several thousand dollars a year because of these costs.

Letting your staff use their personal devices spares your business from many of these expenses. For one, your employees likely already have important business applications, such as the Microsoft Office suite, installed on their gadgets. Under a BYOD setup, your staff will also shoulder the cost of repairing, maintaining, upgrading, and running their personal devices, unless you agree on terms that state otherwise.

A BYOD arrangement can be advantageous to your business, especially if you’re aiming to improve your company’s productivity and reduce costs. At [company_short], we can help you develop and implement BYOD policies that take into account and address your company’s unique needs. Talk to our experts today to get started.