SMART Blog

There are now five bipartisan bills being considered in the United States House of Representatives, strictly intended to help put some checks on the power that today’s modern technology giants have. Let’s consider what these bills are, and why the current business environment has inspired them.

If you are one of the many small businesses out there that does not have reliable technical support for the myriad of devices on your network, it might be difficult to imagine a world where your technology gets the maintenance it needs to thrive. Thankfully, you’re not alone. Here are some basic technology maintenance tips that anyone can implement, plus one at the end that we think small businesses, in particular, will benefit from!

The office environment has changed a lot over the years with technology being the impetus for such change. In your years doing business, how much has changed? How much of that change was driven by technology? Many of the traditional conventions of conducting business have been changed for the better as a result of these technological developments; here are just a few of them.

When you’re on the hunt for some new technology, you have to sort through the options available to you to find what’s best for your use case. One of these decisions is what type of hard drives are installed in new workstations, laptops, and servers. Today, we will go through the two main types of hard drives and what they are good for. 

It is a well-known and unfortunate fact that technology does not last forever, and in today’s era of upgrades, no time has this been more true than in the modern day. Therefore, it makes sense for businesses to have a plan in place for when it does come time to replace older devices. This, of course, involves the proper disposal of connected devices, a practice that could very easily be done in a way that is both destructive to the environment and devastating for data privacy if done improperly. We’re here to make sure this doesn’t happen.

With productivity being a massively important metric for every business, situations like the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic create a lot of fear and uncertainty; especially with businesses having to find new ways to go about doing things so that they can keep revenue coming in. This week, we thought we’d take a minute to look into how businesses have made it this far and how each element of a business has had to react to the ongoing crisis. 

Your business’ technology is the best tool for its success… or it can be, at least. In order for you to see the kind of value from your tech that you’d expect of it, you need to approach it by making good decisions. We wanted to go over a few ways not to do so, to help you avoid undesirable situations.

The process of implementing new technology for your business can be a tiresome, frustrating, and confusing process. This is especially the case when you implement a new technology solution only to find that it was absolutely not worth the effort. Let’s take a look at some of the reasons why your IT project deployment might not go according to plan, as well as how you can make sure this does not happen for your company.

Whether you refer to them as clients or customers, the people who act as patrons to your business are essential to its success and survival. This means that you need to keep them as happy as possible. While there are many aspects of maintaining a high level of customer service, we wanted to take a bit of time to examine how deploying the right technology can assist your business in doing just that.

With businesses relying so much on technology to accomplish just about everything, IT undoubtedly has an important role to play. It makes sense that you would want your business’ IT to deliver as much value as possible. To accomplish this, we wanted to go over three IT-centric processes that are primed to help you do so.

Whenever your technology is involved in your business processes, it is important that you abide by best practices to see the most effective results. Let’s run through the most effective practices that you should reinforce in your operations.

Authentication has been a major talking point for the past few years, particularly as the value of data has only increased and security has correspondingly increased in importance. As a result, more secure and reliable means of identity verification have also become more critical. Now, voice authentication is being considered as such a means.

When was the last time that you took a hard look at your business’ technology? How old are some of the devices that you rely on each day? These are critical questions to answer if you want your business to succeed. Let’s discuss why upgrading is so important, and how to determine when the time to upgrade comes.

When you invest in a new technology solution, you might be wearing your rose-tinted glasses and expecting too much from the solution right out of the box. We all have expectations for what we want the solution to accomplish, but sometimes these expectations simply are not realistic. Let’s take a look at some common misconceptions people have about technology in the workplace, especially in regards to implementation.

With the holidays fast approaching, people are ready to go out and find the best, most perfect gifts for their loved ones. That said, people don’t want to spend their money frivolously; they want to find the best deals while they are available. We’ve compiled a list of some of the best Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals that have been announced so far.

Google’s latest update for their popular Chrome browser has a little bit of a surprise. Chrome can now change many menus to Microsoft’s Windows 11 style menus. While this may be a surprise to some, Google and Microsoft have started to work together in places. Microsoft’s Surface Duo smartphone runs Android technology, and now Google’s Chrome can be customized with Microsoft software in mind.

There will come a time when your business will need to acquire hardware like monitors, server units, workstations, networking components, and other technology. It is your responsibility as a business owner to make educated decisions about how you go about upgrading your gear, but it’s not always immediately obvious what the correct path forward is.

If there is one shared priority most businesses and other organizations need to have it’s a strategy on how they are going to go about securing their network, infrastructure, and data from the numerous threats they face. Let’s take a look at three of the most crucial issues surrounding organizational cybersecurity as we head into the new year.

When it comes to your business’ IT resources, who’s in charge? Do you have a CIO, or chief information officer, managing your IT decision-making, and do you have someone responsible for managing and maintaining your systems? If you don’t know the answer to either of these questions, then we need to have a conversation about your relationship with technology management.

The new year is underway, and many of us have undertaken the traditional resolutions as an effort to improve ourselves by kicking bad habits and adopting good ones. Why shouldn’t your business join in the fun? We’ve put together a few resolutions that could benefit your organization if your team were to adopt them.