POST CATEGORY : Information Technology

Are You Consultant-Phobic? Check Out These 6 Mind Blowing Benefits to External Advice

benefits of hiring a business consultant

Ever think about hiring a consultant? Think your business is too small to benefit from a consultant? You’re wrong! Check out these 6 benefits before you say “No Way”.

Regulatory Compliance: A consultant would be able to help decide on the most optimal structure for your specific situation. Other compliance requirements like documentation and tax filing are also better done by a third party. Most regulatory provisions are open to interpretation and a consultant would help you to minimize your compliance costs without incurring any penalties for violations.

Performance Optimization: Consultants typically have access to benchmarking data across diverse industries on areas such as best practices, cost elements, strategy options and so on.…

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3 Must-Watch TED Talks For Small Business Success

TED Talks are taking the business world by storm. Short for Technology, Entertainment, and Design, TED itself is an annual conference that brings together leaders from these three industries to share their expertise with the crowd.

Past events have featured speaking appearances by top executives from companies such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. Al Gore, Bill Clinton, and J.J. Abrams have also spoke at these conferences.

3 Must-Watch TED Talks For Small Business Success

So what can you take from a TED Talk? Plenty. Here are three success lessons small businesses can learn:

1. A Social Media Presence is More Than a Profile

Several of the more recent TED Talks have been focused on social media – surprise surprise.…

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The Clean and Simple Cloud Computing Primer for Small Businesses

Nobody likes paying for things they don’t use. From finishing a restaurant meal when you’re already full, to calculating just the number of minutes you’ll need on your phone plan, we hate to hand over our money for nothing.

In a traditional office environment, business owners are forced to estimate how much server space they’ll need as they grow, investing in expensive hardware to store company data. That’s all changed in just a few years.

cloud computing for your small business

Once the sole domain of large-scale corporations, cloud computing is now infinitely accessible to even the smallest of businesses. Do you utilize web-based email services like Gmail?…

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Priorities For Technology Due Diligence

There is limited time and access during M&A due diligence. Knowing this, it is critical to focus on the high priority areas with the largest affect on risk.

merger and acquisition IT due diligence

As we discussed in our previous article, “Due Diligence for Mergers and Acquisitions – Why include IT“, technology due diligence is a critical part to evaluating a merger or acquisition. The less time spent the higher probability of extended integration or other issues. We now discuss which parts of IT due diligence to prioritize in order to minimize risk.

People

  • If the organization you are acquiring has proprietary technology, evaluating the personnel is critical as they support the technology.
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Due Diligence for Mergers and Acquisitions – Why Include IT?

include IT in merger due diligenceAs we start to see mergers and acquisitions activity ramp up, we shift focus to the value of technology due diligence.

What do you review during due diligence? You probably look at financials, customer lists, markets and existing executives. You may even review operations, eyeing potential efficiencies, such as those gained by integrating departments like HR, accounting and IT.

Randy Myers, CFO Magazine, states “For CFO’s, valuing the synergies to be realized by eliminating overlapping or redundant systems and operations is a fundamental aspect of M&A due diligence.” But how often do you review the technology area itself?

Not planning ahead can be painful.…

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Shrink Your Website Downtime and Get Tech Support Questions Answered Faster

website down, get tech answers fasterEvery second that your business website is down, your software isn’t working, or your hardware is offline costs you money and customers. You need to get back up and running as quickly as possible. And while a lot depends on what you need and the quality of your tech support, you can help make it all happen a little faster.

Here’s how:

Try to Recreate the Problem

If you get an error, or can’t get a feature to work, try rebooting everything and trying again. You may even want to try the same process on a different computer. If it’s a genuine problem that needs fixing, it should happen again.…

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Expectations For Your Outsourcer to Reduce Your Risk

5 Expectations For Your Outsourcer

Did you sign up for outsourcing figuring you could forget about IT?

Ignore the management of IT at your own risk. One company outsourced its IT, negotiating excellent rates. Sadly, the outsourcer failed to purchase software, installing the same copy again and again. Horrendous customer service created productivity issues. The company paid a penalty to exit the contract and had to purchase the unlicensed software, taking a serious hit to profitability.

In another case, the organization picked an outsourcer based on a board member’s recommendation. Now the outsourcer is struggling with tasks many would consider standard, including simple tasks like monitoring backups.…

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Cloud Computing: Keep Your Feet on the Ground or Reach for the Sky?

Apple has recently announced the launch of its own bet for the cloud computing platform, iCloud. It seems that cloud computing is being looked into not only by business owners but consumers as well. Today, it doesn’t matter whether you have a 4GB USB flash drive or an external hard drive. Those gadgets may become obsolete like the floppy disks we used back in the day.

As a consumer, I might not be completely sold on being in the cloud although there are many benefits such as photo storage, video storage, etc.   None of us want to lose those precious memories, right?  …

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Why SMBs Should Outsource Their ERP

Outsourcing an ERP system (enterprise resource planning) was once thought of something that only large, corporate businesses would venture in but the benefits of outsourcing ERP systems have now caught the attention of smaller companies.   Smaller companies are finding that the improved efficiencies in implementing an ERP system are more than covering the cost of outsourcing their ERP.

outsourcing ERP systems

Before we look at the benefits of outsourcing, it would be beneficial to look at what exactly outsourcing your ERP means to SMBs. This can be broken down into three basic stages:

Application hosting – This is hosting in its traditional form and is the component of hosting which most people will be familiar with.…

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Business and IT – Adversaries or Partners?

business relationships with ITDoes your company’s Information Technology area act more like competitors rather than partners with the business?

A poor relationship with IT can be extremely detrimental to the efficiency, productivity and cost-effectiveness of your organization.

Watch for some of these warning situations:

“¢ Everyone knows HR cuts payroll checks, and finance pays vendors. IT doesn’t always have the opportunity to regularly show its value and can be taken for granted. People don’t want to talk until something is broken, or frustration has mounted to the point of eruption. IT is regularly in a reactive mode.

“¢ IT helps make operations more efficient, but change in organizations can be stressful and can create uncertainty.…

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