SMART Blog

You invested in technology to support your business, spending time and money to acquire and implement it. What happens if that technology turns out to be a lemon… a high-priced item that’s ultimately a dud, or at the very least doesn’t mesh with your future plans?

This is often the result when tech is purchased to fix a short-term issue without a long-term strategy, and ultimately means that the purchaser loses money and productivity due to incompatibility issues. Alternatively, planning a strategic roadmap for your IT to follow helps ensure your investments actually advance your business’ future.

The idea of a four-day workweek (where employees work the same schedule, minus one day a week) has long been campaigned for, with numerous anecdotes supporting its efficacy. One very successful example is provided by the nation of Iceland, which implemented initial trials of reduced work with just under 1 percent of its population, or about 2,500 people, back in 2015. 

These efforts have increased over the years, and today, almost 90% of Icelandic workers work 36 hours per week with no negative ramifications to the economy. In fact, Iceland’s society has enjoyed significant benefits during this experiment.

Acquiring a competitor can be a rewarding and profitable move, but it's crucial to inspect their technology to avoid any unwelcome surprises. A thorough IT audit helps you understand what you're getting and prevents a valuable investment from becoming a money pit. Let’s take a look at some of the things you need to assess before agreeing to take on growth through an acquisition.

No one likes the feeling of being plugged into work all the time. Not even the most diligent employees will appreciate receiving an email after hours. Yet despite this feeling, there’s an unspoken expectation that you are always on, so to speak, especially with the advent of mobile technology and remote work. How can you prevent these issues from escalating into burnout?

How does your business handle the onboarding and offboarding of employees? Depending on your processes, it might involve completing tasks or wrestling with new technology. Whether you like it or not, managing the onboarding and offboarding of employees is a critical part of any business operation from both a security and operational standpoint. Let’s go over how you can make them better.

Take it from us: technology, for all its benefits, can be frustrating.

That being said, it can bring a lot of value to your business when implemented and maintained properly. 

Let’s talk about some quick habits you can deploy to make your workday much easier when working with business technology.

If your business technology setup is driving you nuts, you’re not alone. Many business owners and managers have endless gripes about the technology they use for their business. It could be that your Wi-Fi is crawling along and not allowing for productive Internet speeds, your software feels like it was developed for Windows Vista, or you’re constantly wondering how you are going to keep your data safe. Whatever the case, it can be fixed. In today's blog, we’ll go into how to rebuild your IT plan from scratch.

It is great to have pride and confidence in your business, especially in the team you’ve assembled… including your in-house technical support team. That said, even the most capable IT team may not fully meet a business’ needs.

Let’s explore why this is and what can be done to correct any deficits your team may encounter.  

We’re sure your business has at least a couple of employees who spend part of their workday in a different location, but are you doing all you can to help them be as productive as possible? While remote work is beneficial in so many circumstances, there are a lot of caveats to it that must be considered. Today, we want to go over how you can mitigate risk and keep remote work from becoming a liability for your company.

Unfortunately, crises happen, so the only responsible course is preparing your business to deal with them. Let’s walk through what modern crisis management should look like for businesses of all sizes, identifying the steps to address these risks and protect your operations.

Happy New Year! This time is usually dedicated to making plans and commitments to improve oneself over the coming months in the interest of the future. In the spirit of the holiday, let’s talk about how the right resolutions can help your career or your business’ use of technology.

While the right IT solutions can be a major benefit to your business and its processes, this will only be the case if your team members are trained to use them correctly. Let’s go over some of the training that you need to prioritize in order to ensure your team is ready to use your technology the way it should be used.

When you think about the workweek, there’s a good chance that some iteration of the 40-hour week, broken into 9-to-5 shifts on the weekdays is what comes to mind. It’s just the way things are done. However, this may not be a good thing. Let’s consider the origins of our modern work schedule, and how changing it could provide us all with some serious benefits.

While we certainly have a lot to say about the benefits of the right IT solutions, even we can acknowledge that there is a point of diminishing returns. So, how much technology is too much technology, specifically in terms of the software your team relies on? Let’s explore some of the warning signs.

We’re all aware of the outage that Facebook experienced a few weeks before it announced its Meta rebrand, which prevented users around the world from accessing the services that the social media giant provides. While it may not sound like a huge deal that people couldn’t share their thoughts with one another for a short time, the ramifications stretched far beyond the inability to scroll through a Newsfeed.

Sales. HR. Customer Service. IT. Accounting. Management. These different business departments have (for the most part) been categorized and compartmentalized for decades, cooperating to some extent but largely operating independently of one another. The question is, will this remain to be the case, with so many people now working remotely and communicating with their teammates as needed? Let’s try to make a few predictions as to the future of the departments we are all so familiar with.

Gauging the effectiveness of your cybersecurity can be a bit of a daunting task, especially when asking if it could make a major difference in protecting your organization’s network infrastructure. If you want to track and measure your business’ cybersecurity preparedness, here are four steps to help you perform an evaluation.

Change, whether you’re referring to that of your technology or any other business process, is often a point of contention between management and the rest of the business. Let’s explore this resistance to change that so many feel, and how you can help them overcome it

One of the great obstacles many businesses have to remote work is the fact that, well, the team will be remote—not in the office, safely under supervision. This has led many to consider using the webcams installed in their employees’ devices to keep tabs on them. Let’s explore the idea of monitoring your team, and why it probably isn’t a good one.

Tomorrow, March 31st, is the official World Backup Day, a day intended to remind us all of the importance of taking backups for the sake of data continuity. While this kind of day can be a valuable reminder of a critical best practice, we contend that your awareness of your backup (and the associated maintenance of it) should not be limited to a single day.