Business Solutions & Software Group Blog

Spreadsheets are arguably the most powerful tools in the modern office, yet few users fully leverage their advanced capabilities. Beyond simple calculations, spreadsheets offer intelligent features designed to eliminate manual tasks and reduce human error.

One such feature is the ability to automatically identify the day of the week for any given date.

Countless businesses out there rely on patchwork systems of spreadsheets, sticky notes, and emails to keep their customer relationships in an acceptable state. The problem is that this is no way to conduct customer relations, and the more you rely on manual systems like these, the more organizational debt you accumulate over time. Poor customer relationship management will cost your business hundreds of hours of lost productivity, and with that comes lost sales and opportunities. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Imagine walking through your office and seeing an employee sitting at their desk, staring at their phone for 45 minutes while on the clock. You would step in and say something immediately, right?

Yet, this is exactly what happens every single day in small businesses across the country. It does not look like doing nothing, it looks like a spinning loading icon, a slow VPN connection, or a redundant data entry task.

One of the more frustrating parts of running a business with an IT budget is the rush to spend all those dollars before they get redistributed to other departments. This happens more often than you might think, yet despite this, you have businesses spending without thought, trying to use up the funds before they dry up. In reality, you want to have each of your IT purchases be an investment in the future of your business—an investment made with intention and thought.

Many businesses find themselves allocating their time for IT in a particular way—70 percent to maintenance, with only 30 percent dedicated to innovation and development. For real growth, the opposite is far preferable.

Fortunately, you can embrace better IT by simply reallocating some of your resources. Let’s explore how.

One of the most frustrating parts of working in any word processor is adjusting your text size—especially after you copy and paste content into a document. The formatting gets all out of whack and you’re left to pick up the pieces. One way you can make it easier to fix your formatting is to copy and paste as plain text into the document. We’ll show you how.

While remote work presents many benefits, it has also created challenges, particularly due to the lack of visibility you have over your employees—at least physically. While you hope that trust is enough to carry your business, hope is not a plan for employee productivity. You’ll also need tools and methods to monitor your team so you can hold them accountable. We’re here to deliver the fix to your employee productivity needs.

Do you remember Tay? In 2016, Microsoft launched an AI chatbot on Twitter, named Tay, designed to learn from casual and playful conversation. The result was a spectacular public failure. Within 16 hours, the Internet had taught Tay to be wildly offensive, racist, and conspiratorial. Microsoft had to pull the plug in a panic.

If you’re the type of person who would like the boss to think of you whenever they think about who the most valuable member of their team is, you’ve come to the right place. We often say that we’re all about helping the businesses we work with accomplish their goals. The way we see it, the people who work for the business count too… which is why we wanted to share some handy tricks and tips you can use to look good for your employer.

Let’s review how your technology can help you work smarter, not harder, to look good in the office without giving up your work/life balance.

You’ve invested serious money into your manufacturing equipment. We’re talking about your half-million-dollar workhorses that are supposed to be driving profit. If you’re being honest, though, you’re often just waiting for the next thing to break.

You run your machines hard, and if you only act when the alarm sounds, the grinding noise gets too loud, or the machine throws that dreaded red maintenance light, you’re cooked.

It can be challenging for small to medium-sized businesses to see the true value of artificial intelligence. After all, up until not that long ago, most people associated AI with things like the Terminator, so it has a bit of a reputation to make up for. Regardless, AI is now accessible enough that even these SMBs can embrace its features.

Let’s review some of the ways you could incorporate AI into your business, relatively easily.

Productivity is among the most highly prioritized metrics in modern business, as it impacts so many functions and directly influences your success. This makes every moment precious…meant to be spent progressing toward a goal, not simply doing busy work.

Let’s go over some ways you can manage your time using some proven and trusted frameworks.

An IT project manager might be the most important cog in the machine that is project implementation, and you want to make the best decision possible for the project’s future. We recommend you look for specific qualities that make for an excellent project manager. 

What are these traits, and how do you find them when they matter most? 

Technology should be an advantage for your business, not another headache. You have enough to go around as it is. But for many business leaders, managing their company's IT can feel like a constant battle against unexpected problems and costly downtime.

When it comes to IT support, there are two main approaches: the old-fashioned "break-fix" model and the modern, proactive model known as "managed services." While break-fix might seem simple on the surface, it often creates more problems than it solves. Managed services, on the other hand, offer a more strategic, reliable, and ultimately more profitable path forward.

You want a productive team, therefore, you want to be responsive to their needs. That being said, there comes a time when you have to question if their requests are in the best interest of your operating budget. Today, we want to explore how you can balance the needs of your employees with the needs of your business’ budget.

When you have a business with employees, things tend to get a whole lot more complicated, especially when tracking time for hourly employees. The sad fact is that some individuals are not going to invest their full effort into making sure they’re following operations and procedures as intended. This can bleed into your bottom line. What are you going to do to stop time theft?

One of the most frustrating parts of operating today’s technology is how easy it is to grow disorganized from your day-to-day file management. The good news is that your digital workspace practices can be tidied up easily with just a couple of simple tips. Today, we want to go over how you can become more productive by taking better care of your digital workspace.

Have you ever been met with resistance when you implement a new IT policy or solution? You’re not alone; countless CIOs and business owners experience this issue any time they go to implement an innovative new tool that can have a significant impact on operations. Here’s how you can have a rock-solid approach to taking the friction out of new IT initiatives for your organization.

Downtime is a serious issue for businesses, sometimes to the point of it being a business killer when it’s left unchecked. But what is downtime, and why is it such a problem? Today, we want to help you understand just that, and we’re doing it by calling on the exact opposite of downtime: uptime.

For most people, the Internet browser is likely one of their, if not the, most-used tools in the workplace. Let’s discuss some ways to keep yours organized to help you stay productive.