15
Sep, 2017
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Don’t Underestimate The Value Of Managed IT

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Have you had to make substantial technology investments in the past year? How much money do you think you will spend this year? If you have a solid technology budget in place, you’ll know how much you expect to spend, but what happens if critical systems fail? Are you prepared to cover the cost of new technology, the management of that technology, and the staff that you’ll need to do so? If you are even a little unsure about it, managed IT services could have plenty of value for your business.

There are two critical facets to every IT strategy. The first is based in demand. What technology does your business need to be MOST successful? Do you need one server to deploy the software that your company uses? Three? Five? What do you do for communications? What do you do for storage? There are a lot of variables at work when deciding how to deploy technology solutions, and since there is so much cost associated with these systems, many businesses cut corners to provide their organization with technology solutions but end up putting their overall sustainability at risk.

The second facet, and often most costly, is based in supply. Your supply of technology has to be monitored, managed, and maintained to provide you a reasonable ROI on your technology investments. Typically, the cost of onboarding, training, and deploying a proficient technician far outweighs the cost of new technology; and, to make matters worse, the more technology your organization deploys, the more resources you need to have to ensure that all is running efficiently, and as intended. After all, the downtime that comes with fledgling technology, is a major problem for any organization.

NuTech Services can often provide a substantial cost reduction, better services, better technology, and a better return on your technology and management investments than buying new technology all the time, and hiring people to manage it. We utilize industry-leading remote monitoring and management software, leverage automation, and dispatch certified technicians to help businesses like yours build and maintain robust technology. We also have partnerships with some of the industry’s best vendors to ensure that every client has access to the technologies they need to build an efficient and secure IT infrastructure.

By delivering comprehensive IT management, our managed IT services are exceptionally valuable. If you run an Michigan business that is looking to improve your processes, deploy powerful technologies, and manage the technology you have, call us today at 810.230.9455.

3
Jul, 2017
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There’s a Better Way to Approach Technology Than Fixing What Breaks

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Technology is a major factor that can determine your business’s fate, yet some organizations don’t necessarily recognize IT problems before they make themselves apparent. Unfortunately, by the time you notice any issues with your IT, they are usually turning into problems that cause your business considerable troubles. To keep issues from evolving into major problems, it’s up to you to ensure that your technology is maintained in a proactive fashion.

What NOT to Do
The first thing that comes to mind when thinking about tech support isn’t necessarily the best option out there. Most users think of a break-fix IT provider, which uses the following formula for providing service:

  • Some piece of technology or equipment stops working and it begins to affect operations.
  • You contact your tech support.
  • A technician is dispatched to assist you.
  • You wait for a technician to arrive on-site to fix the issue.
  • The tech arrives and fixes your issues.
  • You pay the support fees.
  • Your employees get back to work.

While this method of IT support certainly gets your problem taken care of, the true cost of such support is that you’re paying every single time you require it. While you pay your IT provider for services, there are plenty of other costs associated with this type of break-fix support. After all, your employees will still have to be paid for any time spent in the office, even if their technology isn’t allowing them to work properly.

Plus, what if the problem is not just affecting your employees, but your clients as well? If they can’t receive the goods or services that you provide for them, then they aren’t going to be happy. If this happens too frequently, they might even consider breaking their agreement with you and moving to a competitor who might offer more reliable services. Therefore, while break-fix IT is certainly a solution, it’s unlikely to minimize damage. You’re better off taking a proactive measure to resolve your technology troubles.

The Right Way to Approach IT
Many organizations are shifting from a dependence on break-fix IT to more proactive solutions, with the primary one being managed IT services. This particular approach takes a much different method of administering IT support:

  • One of the managed service provider’s technicians notices that there are components that might experience a critical issue. They then inform your organization of the possible issue.
  • The managed service provider then works to resolve the problem remotely while possible.
  • If your issue is covered by your service level agreement, then you pay nothing for the service besides your usual monthly fee.
  • Your employees get right back to work with minimal interruption.

The managed services provided by NuTech Services offer your organization dynamic, enterprise-level solutions that allow you to minimize downtime and take a proactive stand against IT issues. We can monitor and maintain your solutions so that your organization can focus on what it does best, without worrying about whether or not your technology will remain functional. To learn more about managed IT, reach out to us at 810.230.9455.

2
Jun, 2017
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Advice for Passing Your Next IT Audit With Flying Colors

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Most people think of audits and immediately cringe, but the fact of the matter is that businesses wanting to maximize output can really benefit from an audit. Audits can be great ways to ensure that a business’ priorities are being given their due attention, and that best practices are being utilized. An audit of your IT infrastructure and network can go a long way toward helping you determine if there are changes you need to make in order to maximize the profitability of your organization.

Here are three of the most common problems that our technicians find when conducting our comprehensive IT audits.

Outdated Software
It doesn’t matter if it’s the operating system on your workstations or the software on the servers, if you fail to apply critical updates and security patches to your operating systems, then your network will be vulnerable. This is a big red flag during any IT audit. Since outdated versions of software can become problematic for your integrated security protocols, by not properly updating your mission-critical software, you could be putting your business at significant risk.

An Absent Business Continuity Plan
As a part of a risk management strategy, any organization that doesn’t have a business continuity plan is ignoring the truth. The facts suggest that a disaster could happen at any moment, whether a company is ready or not. If you fail to prepare for a disaster, you’re staring failure in the face.

Poor or Lackluster Implementation
When it comes to regulatory compliance, NuTech Services will audit your internal processes, and analyze how they could be more efficient or secure. If you have outdated IT policies, they can end up costing you a lot more than a passing grade on an IT audit. If you haven’t properly tested your infrastructure, or if you’ve failed to deploy modern security best practices like multi-factor authentication, then your organization will perform poorly on an IT audit. Furthermore, if an auditor sees that your organization’s IT department splits responsibilities on a per-task basis, you’ll be more likely to score lower than if all IT resources understood how to perform every task necessary to their position.

These are only a few ways that your company could fail to perform as intended during an IT audit. If you want to ensure that your organization can pass your next audit, then you’ll want to ensure that your IT understands the importance of adhering to security best practices and industry standards.

Lastly, it is incredibly important that you remember that auditors aren’t the ones who are trying to sink your business. If anything, they are attempting to help you improve the way your organization operates. They are simply doing what your IT department should be doing in the first place by checking to see if you have unpatched or vulnerable systems, or aren’t adhering to best practices.

NuTech Services can help your business ensure its security by performing an IT audit. We can comb through your network for any potential issues and suggest ways to resolve them. To learn more, reach out to us at 810.230.9455.

15
May, 2017
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Managed IT Can Help SMBs Tackle These 3 Common Challenges

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It’s only natural that new and improved technologies will be challenging for employees to embrace and become accustomed to using. These challenges tend to shape how businesses will make their decisions as time passes. A few industry research firms have released their projections as to what challenges businesses will face in the coming months of 2017.

While their reports were far from identical, there were a few consistencies in the findings that each firm came across. These consistencies can help the average small and medium-sized business adjust their approach in the coming months to optimize their ability to grow.

Both research firms found that, in varying order, the top three challenges that SMBs will face have to do with maintaining their current solutions, organizing restricted budgets and necessary costs, and increasing their security. However, one of the firms found that the concern over security was more focused on their mobile devices. Despite this minor difference, there is still a pattern to the priorities that SMBs will have throughout 2017 that enables us to establish what solutions will be in high demand.

Most notably, the companies who were examined as a part of this research were highly concerned about their finances–specifically, how to optimize their spending in order to receive the highest return on investment as possible for the least amount of capital expended. This considerable task becomes much simpler once a managed service provider is introduced into the equation.

The way things used to be, a company would (for the sake of their budget) assume that they wouldn’t encounter any issues and devote limited funds to resolving them, but when an issue was encountered, the company would end up spending their entire budget and then some, leaving them at a deficit the next time a problem surfaced. An MSP, on the other hand, will provide its services for a regular (and therefore predictable) cost, allowing your business to properly budget for its IT maintenance.

The studies also showed that many businesses were concerned about a few other factors that an MSP can help resolve. An MSP will take proactive steps to make sure that a company’s solutions don’t encounter issues that could throw its productivity into jeopardy. This can be accomplished by proactively monitoring the technology a company has in place. An MSP will also make sure your security solutions are maintained so that threats are less likely to make it onto your network in the first place.

An MSP can help to serve your business beyond these top three concerns throughout 2017 and beyond. For more information into what an MSP can offer, give NuTech Services a call at 810.230.9455.

24
Mar, 2017
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Productivity Suffers Without a Cohesive IT Plan

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There are right ways and wrong ways to do many things, and managing IT is no exception. Many businesses, especially small ones, are left susceptible to issues and vulnerabilities in their network. What’s worse, these are often networks that are supported by an IT “expert.”

Whether it’s due to budget constraints, a lack of workable time, or any other reason, companies frequently settle for substandard solutions when it comes to making changes to their IT. Oftentimes, they’ll try to bury their issues underneath a relatively updated infrastructure without doing anything to resolve the underlying problem. Either that, or they decide that they can fix the problem themselves, piecing together an unstable solution that almost works.

Observing this has only made us at NuTech Services more dedicated to providing a real solution for businesses that resort to these DIY implementations.

Many business, most often small ones, have a few things in common. First, they all experience similar issues with their IT, and secondly, they are usually ill-prepared to deal with the repercussions of these issues. Furthermore, these businesses will frequently neglect their need for standard operating procedures for their employees to follow.

This only opens the business up to greater issues as the employees will resort to processes that they’re personally comfortable with to complete their responsibilities. In the end, the workforce is left in the uncomfortable position of desperately needing change, with the unwillingness to make any changes.

As a result, the already tricky business of running an SMB is only made more difficult. When issues persistently prevent your technology from serving its intended purpose, your employees will be rendered incapable of meeting their responsibilities by a situation that is out of their control.

NuTech Services can help put control back into your hands with our variety of IT solutions. From our proactive monitoring and maintenance practices to our ability to block many distractions, we can apply a consistent solution to your entire network, unifying your IT so it will better serve your needs. Call us at 810.230.9455 for more information.

3
Mar, 2017
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Here’s a Cost-Effective Alternative to Onboarding Additional IT Staff

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An internal IT department serves two primary purposes for businesses. The first is to keep an eye on your technology problems and resolve them. The second is to plan for the future and implement new strategies that will help your organization function more effectively. The problem for the average small business is that their IT department often doesn’t have the luxury of performing both of these tasks.

The root of the problem is that most IT departments are too busy dealing with technology support issues and requests from employees to innovate. Eventually, this lack of innovation could cost your business money.

Do You Know What You’re Paying Your IT Department For?
By definition, your IT department is supposed to plan methods for your business to improve its infrastructure through any means necessary. On the side, they are supposed to help your organization by providing technical support for your assets. By adhering to this model, your IT department should be able to find ways to improve your technology infrastructure, while providing technical assistance for those who need it. The problem is that, as technology becomes more complicated, the help demanded by employees increases.

While it might seem ideal to approach IT support with an internal IT department, it rarely works out. IT departments just don’t have as much time as they need to really work toward improving anything. Often times, these issues are either recurring or resolved simply by rebooting the system, which is a waste of your IT department’s time.

Is Your IT Department Taking Your Company Nowhere?
While your IT department struggles to keep up, your team will naturally need to make forward progress. However, when all they do is respond to problems without making progress in order to prevent them, it’s easy to overlook the fact that many of these problems can be prevented in the future with a little innovation in the present. Plus, when routine maintenance is foregone for the sake of solving short-term problems, you’ll lose out in the long-term due to decreased performance and security issues.

As you can see (perhaps even from your own experience), an in-house IT department is often more distracted by problems that aren’t even theirs to resolve, which pulls them away from work that could make your business better. As a result, many organizations seek to outsource the IT work of their IT department’s in order to make up lost time. This can include innovation, but more often than not, you’ll find that outsourcing routine IT tasks and technology support to be helpful to your company’s overall goals.

After all, your technicians were hired to innovate, so why not give them the opportunity to do so?

To learn more about outsourced IT, reach out to NuTech Services. We can provide a help desk, network audits, and so many more valuable IT services that will help your organization improve efficiency. Call us today at 810.230.9455.

6
Feb, 2017
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How Consolidating Your Technology Vendors Will Save You a Ton of Time

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Who manages the relationships that your organization has with its various vendors? Do you have someone who specifically handles this role, or is it pushed onto your already-full schedule? If this is something that takes up a significant portion of your day, vendor management (though necessary) can become a detriment. Thankfully, there is a better way to handle your vendor relationships, and it doesn’t involve stretching yourself thin.

With NuTech Services’s vendor management strategy, an outsourced provider directly handles all vendor relationships so that your organization doesn’t have to. Vendor management solutions have the potential to save your organization a large amount of time and capital.

Basically, how this works is that you no longer have to deal with the frustrating and time-consuming process of reaching out to each and every one of your vendors, and the outsourced provider handles this responsibility for you. In a sense, a service provider like NuTech Services can be your single point of contact for your technology vendors.

There should be no question whether you have time to deal with the emails and phone calls required to keep up with your technology. We can handle all of this for you, plus some, reaching out to your vendors as your business encounters issues. If you have questions about your products, you don’t have to worry about being put on hold or finding the right technician. We’ll deal with all of that for you so that you don’t have to waste your time.

Consolidating Your Vendors Into a Single Phone Number
Without vendor management, your business would be wasting countless hours that would be better spent on profitable initiatives. Furthermore, relying on vendors to resolve issues can quickly put a time-sensitive project behind schedule. With outsourced vendor management, you achieve all of the goals that you want to get to without sacrificing the time that you would spend making sure that your technology solutions are working as intended. This single point of contact allows you to take the unpredictability out of your tech support.

If your business wants to improve operations and take technology management to the next level, consider our vendor management services. To learn more, reach out to us at 810.230.9455.

9
Jan, 2017
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Is Break-Fix IT Breaking Your Budget?

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Most modern businesses rely on specific technology solutions to ensure operations can work as intended. This includes servers for data storage, networks for data distribution, and workstations for employee productivity. Of course, you have to wonder if this is wise; after all, what happens when this technology fails?

Break-fix IT used to be the staple for business technology maintenance. Organizations would use their technology solutions until they broke down, and would only utilize IT when it needed to be fixed. At the same time, companies would have to struggle with downtime–any time when technology isn’t working as intended. This can quickly lead to a time sink in which you’re losing out on possible revenue, all while fixing technology issues that could have been prevented in the first place. These big hits to budgets can make operations difficult even after recovering from downtime.

Managed IT services are an option that modern SMBs have in order to bypass the shortcomings of break-fix IT. Instead of only resolving IT issues as they happen, proactive managed IT aims to take preventative measures to keep problems from happening in the first place. This includes most all solutions that are managed and hosted by a third-party provider, with the intention of removing responsibilities from your in-house team. Unlike your in-house team, who may struggle with managing some aspects of your technology, you can rely on a third-party managed service provider to guarantee that your technology gets the attention it needs.

A good comparison would be comparing an automobile to managed IT services. If your car is making weird sounds, like the engine spitting and sputtering, you’ll naturally want to get it checked for major problems. However, due to the cost of vehicle maintenance, you might choose to forego maintenance. After all, your car still runs, so surely the problem can wait a bit. In this case, it’s better to get the problem resolved quickly before a motor problem leaves you stranded on the side of the road, with both a towing fee and the repair costs.

On the other hand, having your own team of mechanics that can repair and maintain your car for a monthly fee is a better investment, as they will perform the tuneups and the maintenance needed to keep your car in good shape. This is what having managed IT services feels like.

Preventative maintenance can help to keep technology solutions from experiencing hardware failure for as long as possible. No technology lasts forever, so the ideal way to minimize the damage done by hardware failure is to plan for it. By implementing preventative solutions like data backup and disaster recovery, you can limit how much damage downtime causes your organization, and you’ll be able to make the transition to new technology much easier.

Does your business use proactive maintenance to mitigate threats to your business? If not, reach out to us at 810.230.9455.

26
Aug, 2016
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It Pays to Outsource Your IT

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Technology can be fickle at times. When it’s not working properly, it can hold your business back from reaching its maximum potential. Therefore, in order to maximize your bottom line, it becomes common sense to ensure that your technology is in proper working order at all times. The problem lies in the fact that you may not necessarily specialize in technology management, and don’t have the time or budget to perform maintenance yourself. What’s the SMB to do?

In the past, break-fix IT services allowed users to get the technical support they needed, but at a steep cost. IT companies would tell the user what was wrong with the technology, and offer a price for what it would take to fix it. By nature, this type of IT maintenance is designed to thrive off of the user’s technology failing to work properly. Therefore, from a break-fix IT company’s point of view, there’s no real reason to put preventative measures in place that would save the user money in the long run.

In stark contrast, managed IT services do the exact opposite of their break-fix counterpart, and that’s to save businesses money by preventing issues from developing into costly and downtime-causing problems. This helps organizations keep their IT budgets intact, even if they don’t have a dedicated in-house IT department. Preventative maintenance detects small issues and resolves them in a timely manner, preventing them from becoming major problems.

Here are some examples of effective managed service offerings that can save SMBs money in the long run:

Server Hosting
Your server units are the hardware responsible for the safe storage and distribution of your organization’s digital assets. Therefore, it makes sense that you would want to guarantee that they’re being cared for properly. The problem here is that server maintenance and hosting requires a specific skillset that only a professional technician can provide, and that the SMB typically has a limited IT budget that doesn’t necessarily accommodate hiring new staff members for this purpose. This is often why organizations outsource this responsibility to a managed service provider that can guarantee consistent uptime and the prolonged health of server units.

Network Security
If your business doesn’t know the difference between viruses, malware, trojans, phishing scams, and other common threats, it’s a good idea to have a trained security professional on-hand to manage your network and endpoints. Businesses can outsource the responsibility of maintaining and managing solutions like firewalls, antivirus, spam-blocking, and content-filtering components, that are capable of mitigating threats and limiting exposure to dangerous situations.

Remote Maintenance and Management
There are times when technological issues aren’t immediately known to the user, and they can become disastrous problems later on if ignored. Technology professionals can identify these issues by remotely monitoring statistics like CPU usage, RAM consumption, and other critical factors, in order to prevent them from escalating into major unavoidable disasters. These issues can then be resolved remotely, without the need for an on-site visit from a tech, helping you keep your budget under control.

Backup and Disaster Recovery
Small businesses might be agile enough to respond to threats and disasters promptly, but this is only the case if they’re taking measures to keep their data safe. It’s been shown that businesses that fail to recover their data following a data loss incident, will likely go out of business within one year of the incident. Therefore, you need a comprehensive solution that’s designed to limit data loss and practically eliminate downtime.

If your business has difficulty managing and maintaining its technology infrastructure, why not reach out to NuTech Services to ask about what we can do for your business? To learn more about backup and disaster recovery, network security, and more, reach out to us at 810.230.9455.