3 Ways Technology Will Help Pull Us Through the COVID-19 Pandemic

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Many businesses and people are struggling as the COVID-19 Pandemic closes restaurants and bars, cancels events, and forces people to practice social-distancing. Technology on our side allows us to maintain productivity and ensure life will continue at a somewhat normal clip. We believe there are three key reasons why technology will pull us all through the COVID-19 Pandemic.

1) Remote Work Capabilities

You may have never dreamed you’d be writing up your next big report with your child sitting next to you playing their online educational game, but here we are. Many employers have sent their employees to work from home in an effort to quell the spread of COVID-19. With strong remote access or VPN, work continues without a great deal of interruption.

Learn more: 

2) Virtual Events/Streaming

Events organizers across the country are cancelling, postponing, or moving events online. Technology allows these events to continue without major hiccups. Artists taking to Facebook Live to perform, speakers moving to platforms like Microsoft Live Event, Zoom or YouTube, and church services across the world streaming only, reveals the tip of the iceberg when it comes to streaming technology.

3) Communication

Video chat, online messaging, email, and phone communication will keep the world connected through this difficult time. We’ll quickly see how important it is to connect with our fellow man for work, pleasure, and sanity.

It is unknown how long drastic measures stemming from COVID-19 will last, but with technology thankfully the world will continue to progress.

Learn more in How big tech is taking on COVID-19.

Advancement in technology is transforming how people communicate and collaborate in ways that were previously not possible. Learn more about Microsoft Teams here.

5 Tips for Successfully Working from Home

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COVID-19 has forced event cancellations, school closures, and a consideration for remote work where possible. As more companies are sending their employees to work from home, we compiled this list of tips to be successful away from the office.

Reliable Internet

Nothing is more frustrating than having spotty Internet, especially when you’re trying to work on a big project through a remote access connection to your work computer. Most Internet packages available today will be fine. However, you might need to curb ancillary access of the Internet, like streaming and gaming, if you’re trying to do something more than upload and download documents. If your Internet seems slow, shut down and restart your router/modem. This can sometimes speed things up for a while.

Good Computer Hygiene

You know that “It’s time to update” pop-up that you’ve been avoiding for weeks? Take the time to update. This is most likely handled automatically by your IT team at the office, but your home system may be woefully behind, curbing your speed, as well as opening up unnecessary security holes. We recommend applying security patches as they are released, and keeping your computer up to date. Not sure if there are updates available? You can check in your computer’s control panel. You can also try simply restarting your system. Often, the updates will kick into gear.

To maximize effectiveness, watch the number of programs you’re attempting to run and browser windows you have open at any given time. Computers are not great multi-taskers, instead regularly switching between a multitude of processes (the instructions behind your applications) to complete commands. In fact, the number of processors in your system is the maximum number of things your computer can be “working” on at once, so if you’re seeing a drop-off in performance, take a moment to close a few programs not actively in use.

Connect Securely

In order to protect your business, don’t just install Microsoft Outlook on your personal computer and proceed to work as usual. Instead, connect through remote access software or VPN. This will allow you in to your traditional work desktop without risking business data in an open atmosphere. Consult with your IT team to review their plan for remote access as well as enterprise-grade antivirus before beginning remote work.

Establish Routine

When you go into the office, you have a clear routine. You come in, grab a cup of coffee, banter with your co-workers for a few minutes, sit down at your desk, and get to business. While it may be appealing to work in your pajamas, try to maintain as much normalcy as possible. Stick with a clear starting time and work schedule. Create an office space so that you’re not just piled up on the couch. Plan to get dressed and ready for the day, just like you’re going into the office.

Over-communicate

You may find yourself feeling isolated pretty quickly when working from home. This is likely because you’re missing out on the short interactions and general banter with your colleagues. We highly recommend setting up a daily touch-base with your team in order to discuss priorities, work through sticking points, and to simply connect with other human beings. Don’t be afraid to send more progress emails than normal. Utilize messaging apps liberally, and don’t underestimate the power of a video chat or meeting. If an email exchange is getting too longer (more than three replies back and forth without solving the problem) pick up the phone.

Working from home can be an extremely powerful tool. When done right you can be as productive, if not more so than at the office. Enjoy the opportunity presented by COVID-19 concerns to establish a new work normal, at least for a short period of time.

Additional Resources

7 Necessities Before Sending Your Workforce Remote

Improving Collaboration with Microsoft Teams

3 Ways Technology Will Help Pull Us Through the COVID-19 Pandemic

7 Necessities Before Sending Your Workforce Remote

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Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, many companies are considering work from home options to facilitate social-distancing and keep their workforce healthy. However, it’s not as simple as sending your employees home, firing up personal laptops and getting back to work. Here are seven things you need to have lined up in order to successfully deploy your remote workforce.

  1. Secure Remote Access: Employees should not have open access to everything on their work systems from their personal computers. This keeps company data protected. In order to be productive through this pandemic, however, employers will need to provide a secure connection utilizing VPN or remote access software. These solutions will mirror the employee’s work desktop without housing all of the data on the individual’s personal system, allowing them to seamlessly continue work.
  2. File Sharing Capabilities: While people will be working in isolation, they must still be able to collaborate. File sharing/group editing software will be critical to moving forward creative or documentation projects through real-time editing, commenting, and versioning. Tools like O365 Microsoft Teams/Sharepoint fill this need securely.
  3. Enterprise Level Antivirus: Basic home-level antivirus is not sufficient, particularly in secured industries. Extend your enterprise-level antivirus to home systems that will be accessing your network to create an added layer of protection. You may also consider deploying firewalls on top of individual’s home networks to create the same secure connection employees experience in your office.
  4. Video Conferencing: Meetings must go on while people work remote; however, voice-only leaves much to be desired in terms of tone and context. We highly recommend implementing video conferencing tools such as Microsoft Teams.
  5. Messaging Software: You can’t just spin your chair around to talk to your co-worker when working remote, yet it’s not efficient to always pick up the phone. We recommend implementing a messaging software like Microsoft Teams to open communication channels and allow employees to continue to interact quickly and accurately. Utilizing these tools, you can set up one-on-one conversations or set up channels to facilitate team communication.
  6. Phone: A strong VoIP solution will allow employees to take their phone numbers remote to their cellphones without giving out their cellphone numbers. Office calls will transfer seamlessly to the employee’s cellphones, voice mails will be sent via email, and the employee can dial-out using a phone application to maintain office functionality.
  7. Remote Access Policy: Prior to providing access to your employees, put in place a clear access policy that acknowledges that your company monitors whatever they do while connected. Employees should be encouraged to act as if they are on site even while working remote and reminded that punishments for doing something illegal/against company policy will apply.

The COVID-19 situation is ever-changing. Schools across the nation have been closed and events have been cancelled. While it may make sense to keep your employees on-site for now, we believe it’s important to have a plan should you need to close your physical offices. Getting these seven pieces of the puzzle in line will prepare you to take your workforce remote. Get a head start with the Microsoft Teams Quick Start Program from CCS Technology.

Additional Collaboration Resources

5 Benefits of Better Collaboration for Businesses

Improving Collaboration with Microsoft Teams

3 Ways Technology Will Help Pull Us Through the COVID-19 Pandemic

Solve Shadow IT Problems with Managed Services

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“Shadow IT” is both a management and security problem. Leveraging managed services offers a potential solution to bringing it under control.

Shadow IT Problems

Shadow IT is any IT service that is accessed without the oversight of company information technology teams. It can be in the form of spending approved by business departments or it can be accessed by individual employees without the knowledge of their supervisors.

While the motivations behind this unapproved IT usage are generally good—employees or departments are trying to access the best technology to help them get their jobs done—it presents several risks from an IT management perspective.

First are the management risks. By definition there’s a lack of visibility into shadow IT. You don’t know what technology you’re using, you don’t understand your dependence on it, and you are vulnerable to outages if the service becomes unavailable. You don’t know the demand these shadow services place on your networks and other resources. In addition, you can’t manage licenses and usage properly, potentially leading to audits and penalties.

Second are the security risks. You don’t know if the technologies being used comply with the regulations relevant to your business. Because the technologies haven’t gone through any official approval process, you don’t know where their vulnerabilities are. Access isn’t being controlled properly. You can’t monitor for breaches because you don’t know where to look.

To resolve the challenges of shadow IT, you need to identify where it’s being used and then understand why employees are going around the official IT procurement processes.

Limit Shadow IT Usage

Network monitoring can help identify new hardware devices and new software services being accessed, as can employee surveys (that don’t impose penalties for admitting to such use).

Then you can take steps to block unapproved technology. Both policies and firewalls can help limit access to unapproved cloud services to prevent shadow usage. Data loss prevention tools and cloud access security brokers can limit the unauthorized movement of data to cloud services.

Eliminate the Need for Shadow IT Through Managed Services

Surveys can identify the reasons employees use unapproved services, but may not be necessary. The big reason for shadow IT is that conventional IT teams are a roadblock, offering limited choices of technology and slow approval and implementation processes. Other common reasons employees opt for shadow IT include frequent outages and poor problem support from the internal IT team.

That’s why managed services offer a solution to the shadow IT problem. With a dedicated team of expert IT personnel dedicated to proactive systems maintenance and support, the routine IT problems that frustrate employees are reduced. Managed services can also speed up procurement and deployment, allowing you to deliver better technology to your employees faster. In addition, managed services free up your own IT team to focus on business-specific IT solutions rather than routine maintenance, allowing them to provide forward-looking technology.

Contact CCS Technology Group to learn more about how managed services can help you solve your shadow IT problem.

Additional Managed Services Resources

The Metrics That Mean You Need Managed Services

5 Reasons Managed Services Are Good For Your Business

6 Big Benefits from Using Managed Services

The High Cost of Falling for Phishing

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Any employee can fall for a phishing scam. When the employee who falls for the scam is authorized to access and transfer large sums of money, an honest mistake can have significant costs.

$400,000 Sent to a Phisher

That’s what happened to Barbara Corcoran, of “Shark Tank” fame. A phisher changed one character in an email address and reached out to Corcoran’s bookkeeper. The email requested nearly $400,000 to be sent to a German company.

Of course, the bookkeeper didn’t just hand over the money. She replied back to who she thought was Corcoran’s executive assistant, and there was a legitimate-sounding reason for sending money to what appeared to be a legitimate business. The money got sent out, and it was only a later email to the executive assistant—not sent by hitting “reply” to the phishing message—that discovered the scam.

Business Email Compromise

The FBI calls these targeted phishing schemes business email compromise (BEC), and they’re a major risk to businesses. Once the money is wired, it is extremely difficult to get it back.

The scam Corcoran’s assistant fell for required some knowledge of how her business operated, in order to have a reasonable response when the bookkeeper questioned the request for the funds, but hackers don’t need to be sophisticated to implement the scam. Criminals can simply purchase templates that allow them to send these messages or break into an email account using passwords stolen in an earlier breach; if they’re not sure what they need to do, they can buy a phishing tutorial to learn. The overall costs of BEC in 2019 were close to 1.8 billion dollars, according to the FBI.

Defending the Business Against BEC

There are multiple types of phishing attacks, so there are multiple defenses needed, too.

Not all the attacks are as targeted as the one that hit Corcoran. Some attacks send generic messages to thousands of targets. Email filters can help block the messages from reaching employees, and training can help employees learn to report them rather than responding to them.

The more targeted attacks need to be handled through business procedures as well as technological fixes. When there are unexpected requests for large sums of money, businesses can require confirmation through a phone call in addition to an email paper trail.

Learn more about protecting your business against phishing emails.

To make sure you have effective phishing protections in place, contact CCS Technology Group. Our IT security services include employee training as well as the latest in technology to keep your business secure from phishing and other IT security threats.

Compare the Top 14 Cloud ERP Solutions

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If you’re considering making the move to cloud Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software, you will find IDC research useful in your vendor selection process. Last year, the technology analyst firm published a MarketScape report: “Worldwide SaaS and Cloud-Enabled Operational ERP Applications 2019 Vendor Assessment.” The report compares the 14 top cloud ERP providers, from IDC’s point of view.

IDC takes the perspective that cloud ERP is essential for digital transformation (DX). As they put it, “Smart DX businesses have turned their focus to SaaS and cloud-enabled software because they need flexible and agile financial applications that are relatively easy to implement, configure, and update.” The firm sees growing demand for cloud ERP for this reason. In particular, IDC felt that cloud ERP was necessary for accessing and analyzing large amounts of data in near real time. This is best accomplished in the cloud.

The report includes assessments of the major cloud ERP platforms: SAP, Oracle, IFS, Oracle-NetSuite, Microsoft (Dynamics), Infor, Plex Systems, Priority, Acumatica, Epicor, Ramco Systems, Syspro and Sage. As with all MarketScapes, IDC divides the vendors into “Leaders,” “Major Players,” “Contenders” and “Participants.” The placement is based on IDC’s evaluation of each vendor’s capabilities and strategies.

Acumatica ranked as a “Major Player” in the report. As an Acumatica partner, we found this to be an exciting and well-deserved development. Acumatica has been innovating and growing since its founding in 2008.

IDC praised Acumatica for being a “modern platform.” They liked Acumatica’s open (RESTful) APIs along with the platforms ability to automate business workflows. They characterized the Acumatica mobile application as “highly functional.” For IDC, the full integration of Customer Resource Management (CRM) into the platform helped position Acumatica as a major player. IDC also highlighted the value of Acumatica’s user interface (UI), dashboards and reporting.

The report lauded Acumatica’s multi-entity transaction capabilities. They said, “Acumatica has enhanced its offering significantly and is now able to support customers with complex global corporate structures, allowing the books to be closed independent of other subsidiaries or business units.”

Acumatica stood out for IDC for what they call Third Platform and innovation investment. The analyst firm expressed the view that Acumatica’s continued investment in Third Platform and relevant innovation accelerators would help with the company’s future growth. These included investments in data-driven functions like machine learning, natural language processing (NLP), business intelligence (BI) and data analytics.

The Third Platform is a concept developed by IDC that refers to blending of traditional IT with mobile, social, cloud and Big data. Third Platform innovators like Acumatica focus on the consumer and end user, rather than on the enterprise alone.

The IDC report is valuable because it allows you to compare the strengths and challenge areas for so many leading cloud ERP providers. The analysis is fair and even-handed. We recommend Acumatica for many of our clients, but there are certainly many good choices on the market today. At the same time, it’s worth paying attention to areas where certain vendors are struggling. Not all cloud ERP solutions are cloud-native, for example, as Acumatica is.

Get the full report here. To learn more about Acumatica, contact us to arrange a demo.

Additional ERP Resources

Why Growing Companies Need ERP Software

Position Your Business for Growth with Cloud ERP

How ERP Software Can Save Your Business Money

Multiple Clouds Make Mastering Cloud Management Even Harder

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If you’ve got cloud—and by now, everyone has got cloud—chances are, you’ve got multicloud. This can result from strategic decisions to obtain specific services from best-in-class providers or the result of not having a cloud strategy and allowing individual departments to make their own cloud picks. Whether multicloud is a deliberate decision or an accident, once you’ve got multiple clouds, you’ve also got additional cloud management challenges.

Multicloud Management Challenges

The multicloud management challenges include:

  • Cost. It’s difficult to get an overall picture of cloud spending when it’s split up over multiple providers with different billing cycles. It’s also difficult to determine if the resources you’re paying for are being utilized efficiently. Some cloud management tools can load all your usage and billing data to provide a comprehensive picture of total costs and utilization, while also allowing you to drill down and see the details of departmental spending.
  • Expertise. It takes time to become familiar with any new technology. Working with multiple cloud providers means your team will have to learn multiple ways of working in the cloud.
  • Migration. Getting to cloud can be difficult and creating migration plans is time consuming. With multiple clouds, you may need to develop different migration strategies for different platforms.
  • Security. Multiple clouds mean more potential security risks. There are more logs to monitor for suspicious activity. It’s hard to ensure policies are applied consistently across different cloud providers with different controls. Defining role-based access controls and leveraging single sign-on also become more challenging.
  • Performance. Because workloads are scattered across multiple clouds, it’s more difficult to monitor and ensure adequate performance. Using multiple clouds can also place more load on your network, especially if the clouds aren’t running isolated services but share data through APIs or other methods.
  • Visibility. Visibility is a problem to some extent even when you have just a single cloud. Visibility into your infrastructure and system status may be limited by the cloud provider and by your inability to access the underlying hardware. Multiple clouds often make visibility even harder because dashboards display only local data; it’s probably necessary to use a third-party tool to achieve consolidated view. In addition, different flavors of cloud—IaaS, PaaS, SaaS—require different levels of monitoring.
  • Automation. Automation and orchestration are key to efficient IT operations; it ensures necessary processes run on time and eliminates manual errors. Again, because multiple clouds have different ways of doing things, it can be complicated to develop a single automation solution across all providers.

Whether you have one cloud or many clouds, cloud solutions from CCS Technology Group ensure they’re managed effectively so your business experiences the benefits of cloud. Contact us to talk about your cloud challenges and how CCS Technology Group can help you solve them.

7 Critical Factors to Consider When Developing Your Backup Strategy

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Backing up without a strategy, or with an ineffective strategy, is likely to generate backups that don’t protect your business. After all, the point of backups isn’t to create the backup; it’s to create a copy of data that your business can restore from when the primary copy is damaged or unavailable. Creating a backup strategy to meet that goal requires identifying key backup concerns and selecting appropriate backup technologies.

Critical Factors in Developing Backup Strategies

When you start thinking about your backup strategy, keep these considerations in mind. You’ll need to balance these factors to come up with a strategy that truly protects your business.

  1. Cost. Like everything else, backups cost money. You may have to buy hardware and software, pay for a maintenance agreement, and train your staff.
  2. Backup location. Today, many default their backups to the cloud. However, you should still consider potentially keeping a copy of your data in another location as well. Cloud outages are rare but do happen.
  3. Backup method. You can choose from different kinds of backups. Each backup method requires a different amount of storage, impacting costs, and a different amount of time, impacting both the length of the backup procedure and the length of the recovery procedure.
  4. Backup (and recovery) flexibility. When creating backups, you generally want to backup everything, but that’s not true for recovery. Recovery needs to be able to scale from restoring a single file to restoring an entire server.
  5. Backup schedule. Your backups should be automated and run on a schedule, not rely on someone remembering to execute them manually. They should be scheduled to run frequently enough that you’ll capture data that changes often as well as data that changes rarely. They should be scheduled around production workflow needs. Your recovery point objective and recovery time objective come into play here; note those targets shouldn’t be global but should be tailored to the needs of each system. Your backup schedule may be unique to each system as well
  6. Scalable. You can expect your data to grow and your backup needs to grow along with it. Your backup process should be able to handle expected volumes of new data. You should have a process that ensures new servers, applications, and data stores are added to your backups.
  7. Backup security. Backups need to be accessible when needed, but they shouldn’t be accessible by just anyone. Making sure backups are safe from tampering is vital to protect your business.

Backups are part of a comprehensive business continuity solution. Contact CCS Technology Group to learn more about how these critical factors can shape your backup process.

Acumatica 2020 R1 New Features

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Acumatica 2020 R1 was introduced in Las Vegas on January 28, 2020. A few changes are being made to the Cloud ERP system, with several additions that will increase functionality. Acumatica is clearly committed to advancing technology and expanding the user experience. This latest semi-annual release of the software was discussed in keynotes and breakout sessions at the Acumatica Summit 2020. Some of the most important features of the new version were revealed, including:

Integration of Omnichannel Commerce with BigCommerce

BigCommerce integration provides omnichannel sales support, so organizations can integrate sales, delivery and customer service. This added functionality expands how a company can interact with customers and supports B2B and B2C models.

Integration with Adobe Document Cloud

Acumatica now works with Adobe Sign, so businesses can capitalize on cloud-based e-signatures. Documents can be sent, signed and tracked using a browser or mobile device. This new feature enables more streamlined document management and contract management.

Usability Improvements

Users can now create expense reports with a mobile camera. Additional mobile functionality includes recording travel and break time on service calls and attaching captured images to data records. A quick add button allows faster access to data entry screens. Dashboard caching and pivot table percentage calculations, along with distinct counts, have been added to simplify reporting,

Updated Modules

In addition to BigCommerce integration, Acumatica Payroll has been improved to minimize overhead expenses. You can run in-house payroll processes from the software to speed paycheck delivery. Added features include salaried and hourly workers, integrated taxes and tax forms, deductions and benefits, flexible payroll periods and timecard integration with overtime rules.

Updated Functions in a Single Business-Wide Software Suite

All industry editions of Acumatica have been enhanced with new features. Acumatica 2020 R1 expands sales and warehouse operations for fast generation, tracking and management of inventory-related items. Warehouse Management now supports rapid fulfillment with wave and batch picking. Acumatica’s new international depreciation enhancements have been added to support companies focused on worldwide expansion.

New project management tools allow users to manage more projects. For example, project balance reconciliation has been simplified, while you can track project progress with improved daily field reports. Weather data (available via the ClimaCell service), photo logs and other data can now be added to reports. You can now also track payments and retainage by lines in accounts receivable.

Acumatica 2020 R1 also lets users track production and costs with native shop floor data collection, which can improve manufacturing operations. The ERP now supports advanced planning with capable-to-promise and what-if scenarios as well. Also highlighted during the release event were Open APIs for integrating artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to drive automation and efficiency.

About Acumatica Cloud ERP

Acumatica Cloud ERP is a complete business management solution that supports manufacturing, distribution, retail/e-commerce, manufacturing and construction industries. It provides a complete audit trail of changes and full CRM functionality to improve customer support.

We have worked with many companies in the implementation of Acumatica. The software scales with your business as it grows. To learn more or schedule a free demo, contact us.

Additional Acumatica Resources

Why Acumatica Outpaced NetSuite on the Most Recent G2 Survey

Acumatica Financial Management

Optimize Your Quote-to-Cash Process and Improve Customer Service

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Business isn’t that complicated. The customer wants his or her order. You want your money. The fewer complications the better. The sooner the customer gets the order, and the sooner you get the cash, the happier everyone is. Alas, things are not always so simple. More than few things can disrupt the quote-to-cash process. Software innovations, like Acumatica Cloud ERP for distribution, are making it easier to improve cash flow and customer experience, however.

The Quote-to-Cash Process

We all understand the quote-to-cash process intuitively, but it’s worth taking a closer look to see how many people, workflows and software applications it can take to execute. The process starts with a moment of customer contact where a salesperson gets information about what the customer needs. This could occur by phone, email or online quote request form. The salesperson then prepares a price quote, often using a productivity tool like Microsoft Word or a sales order processing application.

If the customer accepts the quote, the salesperson may then have to enter the resulting sales order, manually, into an order management system. From there, the warehouse or manufacturing operation has to fulfill the order. This may involve yet more manual rekeying of order data into a distribution management and logistics system. Once delivered, the order can be invoiced, which usually requires an invoicing system that may or may not be part of the company’s accounting software package. When payment comes from the customer, the cash deposit posts in the general ledger software.

Even when these separate processes and software packages are connected, the overall quote-to-cash process can still be cumbersome. A lot of people/hours get spent keeping on top of orders and their fulfilment through the final receipt of cash. There are also many opportunities for errors and confusing situations that can negatively affect customer service. For example, if one item out of ten quoted is out of stock, that will change the quote amount. This, in turn, may generate back-and-forth communications with the customer, adjustments to invoices, delays in order processing and so forth.

Improving the Quote-to-Cash Process

Modern automated systems like Acumatica Cloud ERP provide you with features, integrations and process orchestrations that streamline the quote-to-cash process. By connecting the various elements of the process and giving the different people involved a unified view of what’s going, the software helps improve cash flow while maintaining a good customer experience.

Now, with a single connected system, your people can take orders accurately, ship promptly and avoid billing errors. You get your cash faster. Reporting and data visualization tools give you insights into potential issues with slow payers, delayed deliveries and inventory control challenges.

Order automation enables order-taking over the phone, via websites and point-of-sale (POS) devices. The cloud ERP is able to display item availability and apply discounts automatically. It can be configured to show a variety of delivery options. The order then gets processed without any rekeying of information. The automation and orchestration continue through invoicing and accounting processes that complete the “to cash” step of the process.

We have worked with many companies on the implementation of cloud ERP to improve order-to-cash and the broader operations of a distribution business. Contact us to learn more or see a demo of Acumatica.

Additional Distribution Resources

Top Reasons for Installing a Warehouse Management System (WMS)

Recommendations for Selecting a Distribution ERP Solution

Looking at 2020 Distribution Industry Trends with ERP in Mind