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Insider 94 Navigator 2023
Resources & Advisors for Buying & Selling a Business
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Case Study – Healthcare – Skyway Behavioral Health
Start Up Requiring Robust Infrastructure – From Planning to Implementation
The 7 Irresistible Qualities of Cloud ERP
Learn why ERP tools are an critical component for many businesses.
Why a Business Continuity Plan is Essential
Learn why your company needs a business continuity plan.
Ransomware 101
If you’re looking for ways to stop ransomware dead in its tracks, the experts at CCS Technology are here to help.
How managed services make the difference
Learn more about the benefits of partnering with a managed services provider.
Cloud Services and the SMB Revolution
Learn more about how Cloud Services from CCS make your life easier.
Office 365 Migration Made Easy
Migrating over to Office 365 has never been easier with CCS Technology.
The Advantages of Working with I.T. Pros
Learn how working with a seasoned technology pro makes your work easier.
Closing Common Cybersecurity Holes
Learn several critical cybersecurity tips and tricks any SMB can use.
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Aerosmith and the art of rockin’ IT solutions
/in Blog, Managed Services /by wpengine“Tell me how it is that you can sleep in the night, without thinking you lost everything that was good in your life to the toss of the dice?” – Aerosmith, “What it Takes”, (Pump, 1989)
Steven Tyler totally has the right idea on the song “What it Takes”. You never want to roll the dice when it comes to IT solutions. Inspired by some of Aerosmith’s greatest tracks, here’s a setlist of rockin’ IT solutions for your office.
Dream On
Ever catch yourself daydreaming, head in the clouds? In your business, that’s not a bad idea. Introducing a cloud-based solution to your business will help you streamline your workplace systems, improve your operation and reduce overhead costs.
Right Scale reports that “Companies now run 79 percent of workloads in cloud, with 41 percent of workloads in public cloud and 38 percent in private cloud.”
Cloud solutions allow for ease of installation, lower payroll hours, and scalability for growing businesses. Those are pretty impressive stats, right? If you know anyone in business who thinks they can move forward without incorporating cloud solutions, you can probably tell them to “dream on.”
Just Push Play
Often, apps exist that are perfect for your business. When they aren’t, you need the capability to develop your own apps that are customized to fit your specific business needs.
App creation is also super beneficial when accounting for the increase in employees who need to be able to work from mobile devices. The proliferation of mobile apps in business actually casts a shadow on those not yet in the app game. Adobe reports that “61% of organizations believe that if a company hasn’t deployed any enterprise mobile apps yet they’re at a competitive disadvantage”.
Whether you’re building internal apps for specialized workflow or customer-facing applications to better engage clients, the goal is to create something that fits your business so well that all you have to do is “just push play” and you are ready to get to work.
Back in the Saddle
Picture this: It’s a sold-out stadium show for Aerosmith. Steven Tyler saunters out and takes center stage, his ego boosted by the adoring applause of tens of thousands of fans. Joe Perry follows suit, retrieving his beautiful Les Paul Gibson guitar from its stand. And it’s totally busted. For some reason, the roadie forgot to string the guitar. It’s sitting there with one D string, the other five tucked away somewhere backstage or on the tour bus. What’s a rock star to do?
This is a situation that happens often with technology, particularly if you have been handling your own system backup and software maintenance.
What would Joe Perry do? He’d do the same thing any IT team would suggest. He’d reach for his backup. If you’re Joe Perry, that means you reach for one of the other 600 guitars in your collection. If you’re a business owner, you need your own redundancies in place to keep the business going if your systems are interrupted for technical or human reasons, which can vary from the mundane to the criminal.
In fact, you may even want to work with your IT team to add a foolproof disaster recovery plan for any situation to the list of your IT solutions and you’ll be “back in the saddle” in no time.
We would be happy to jam with you about more ways to incorporate rockin’ IT solutions into your business. Feel free to give us a call or shoot us an email.
Justice is servered: The ultimate professional services superhero team
/in Blog, Managed Services /by wpengineAs managed service providers (MSPs) develop more expertise to fit the specific needs of their clients, it’s often beneficial to offer advanced professional services to growing businesses. You can compare this to superheroes teaming up in the Justice League to save the world and take on nefarious criminals. Sure, Batman might be able to fight off a dozen assailants, but it’s a big bonus when Superman is there to round them up and fly them off to jail at the speed of sound.
Ideally, when choosing your managed service provider, you want to make sure they have experts on their team who can fill the following roles:
1. The Heart, Wonder Woman
One of the primary professional services you’ll encounter is physical installation. For this, you’ll want to look for an MSP with the physical resources and knowledge to properly set up your office network and system to fit the needs of your team and your customers.
Think of Wonder Woman. She’s a fierce warrior and easily capable of the physical work, but one of her greatest strengths is her compassion. She longs to understand and honor the human element. This is a quality that is super important when setting up a physical network. An MSP needs to know how the network will be used and how to apply the infrastructure to your specific business and organizational needs.
2. The Fortifier, Batman, Cyborg
Remember that time you snuck into the Batcave? Probably not. That’s because Bruce Wayne has built a veritable fortress with the best cybersecurity and physical security in the world to guard his secret identity and to protect his Bat-family.
Many MSPs will do the exact same for your business, by installing physical security components to work in collaboration with your cybersecurity solutions. Physical security options can include cameras, electronic access, and more – all designed to eliminate external and internal threats. Sometimes, this even requires educating employees and adjusting current behaviors. Especially when 55 percent of organizations have had a security incident or data breach due to a malicious or negligent employee. Even Robin needs a lesson or two about how not to blow things up in the armory.
3. The Mindreader, Martian Manhunter
The Martian Manhunter is the Justice League’s resident telepath. He knows the best path for people’s lives, because he excels at reading their hopes, dreams, and goals.
The best MSPs know what you need for your business, because they put in the time and effort to get to know your business and its operations. From a professional services standpoint, this means they are often able to create custom IT solutions for your business.
One of the hottest professional services right now is app development. Any leading MSP should be able to create a custom app for your business that will help streamline your particular workflow. In fact, app development is practically becoming mandatory for businesses who want to win customer loyalty. OuterBox reports that 40% of users will go to the competitor after a bad mobile experience.
4. The Speedster, Flash, Superman
When Lois Lane gets a craving for authentic Thai cuisine, Superman is off like a rocket to Bangkok. When some poor gal falls from a 45-story building, the Flash runs up the facade and catches her, depositing her safely on the rooftop garden.
Many MSPs provide the same level of on-call service. Make sure to always check your MSP’s hours of operation, service response standards and after-hours options. Some MSPs even offer a Batcave-like Network Operating Center (NOC), where your network can be monitored 24/7/365. This is the best way to make sure your network issues are solved in a flash.
5. The Backup, Green Arrow
In the world of IT solutions, it’s important to create redundancies. If the measures you have in place to keep your network running end up taking a beating, then you better make sure you have a backup plan.
In the Justice League, that means Batman might have to call in his pal Green Arrow, who happens to have a knack for hitting the bullseye when things go awry. In IT, that means that your MSP can help you target areas of data that need to be backed up more frequently, and create a disaster plan.
Please give us a call or send us an email when you are ready to chat about these super Professional Services and more.
Do you know the value of your CRM?
/in Blog, Customer Relationship Management, Productivity /by wpengineIn 1989, a small-time collector was perusing art at a flea market. He ended up buying an uninspired pastoral painting, purely for the frame.
When he got it home, he removed the painting. He had no intention of keeping it. To his dismay, he discovered the frame was cheaply made and not salvageable.
But he found something else inside. Folded behind the painting was a copy of the Declaration of Independence. He could tell it was old, but he didn’t think it valuable. Then a friend urged him to research it.
As it turned out, the hidden copy was one of only 24 first prints of the historic document. In June of 2000, it sold at Sotheby’s for $8.1 million.
Hidden Value
If you do a quick Google search, you’ll find a slew of similar stories.
The original Velvet Underground demo someone bought for 75¢. The 11th-century Chinese pottery bought for three bucks and later sold for $2.2 million. The Warhol sketch purchased for $5 that turned out to be worth an estimated $2 million.
Sometimes there’s immeasurable value right under our noses, but we don’t see it. For many small business leaders, that’s true of their CRM solution. If you think of your CRM as little more than an elaborate database, you could be one of them.
How Your CRM Can Be A Game-Changer
A CRM (short for “customer relationship management”) solution is a powerful, robust tool—if you know how to use it. Unfortunately, we’ve worked with plenty of SMB owners who are barely scratching the surface.
Below is a quick list of some of the powerful things your CRM can do that you might not know about.
Streamline the sales process.
The goal in sales is to convert leads to prospects and prospects to customers. A CRM helps with that process by providing a clear picture of where each contact is in the process. By reviewing previous sales attempts, you can determine what strategies work best, equipping your sales team for better closing rates in the future.
Close the right deals.
One of the challenges of sales is qualifying potential customers. The faster you can determine who is and who is not a likely to buy, the less time you have to waste pursuing dead ends. A CRM gives you a framework for making that call faster, ensuring that you close the right deals—for you and for your clients.
Know your market.
You can also use the data in your CRM to tease out trends and movements in your market. If customers are migrating from one kind of product or service to another, you’ll see it in the reports. If your business is seasonal, that’ll become clear, too.
Meet customers’ needs.
Cross-selling and upselling get a bad rap. Neither is inherently bad. It’s all about knowing what actually helps your customer base. The better your customer records, the more easily you can identify the products and add-ons that will help the most.
Manage customer communication.
When all communication is housed in one place, it’s much easier for your employees to deliver top-tier customer service. This is especially true in the moment, like when they have a customer on the phone. A CRM makes that extra insight possible across your team.
Personalize communication.
Automatic messaging can include order status updates, shipping notifications, and simple thank you messages. A CRM gives you the ability to automate each of these with some nice personal touches. That way your customers know what’s going on at all times.
Incorporate social media.
The most current CRM tools also incorporate options for social media contact. Given the marketing potential of social media, this is a must-have for small business owners. And a CRM makes utilizing social media—for everything from announcements to events to contests to customer stories—so much easier.
Let CCS Technology Guide You to the Perfect CRM
With all the CRM solutions out there, how do you find the one that’s best for your business? And once you’ve found it, how do you transition your current process over to the new CRM?
The easiest way also happens to be the smartest way—get some help from the experts.
The pros at CCS can take you through the whole process, ensuring you end up with the best possible CRM solution for your business needs. If you’re ready to unleash the power of a CRM, give us a call. We’re ready to help.