The ACCENT Learning Hub

You’ve just typed up your monthly email to your loyal followers and clients and you hit the magic button — send!

January 14, 2020 marks the end of support for one of the most popular operating systems for businesses – Windows 7. It was released in 2009 and has served us well, but the end is near and it’s time to start planning your transition.

With the recent enforcement of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) on May 25, 2018, there’s been a lot of talk regarding regulatory compliance; specifically, who is responsible for what.

    Most small business executives agree that cyber security threats are real. From malware to phishing scams, many have gone through the pain of losing data, money, productivity, or all of the above. If you haven’t suffered a loss yet, you should count yourself among the lucky. You know that your company data should be secured as much as possible, but cyber security is an expansive topic with many areas to cover, so where do you start?

To get some insights into what we can expect in 2018, I reached out to a few Southern California executives in varying fields and asked them what their predictions were for the year. Once I gathered the data, a few themes emerged. Not surprisingly, many of them had to do with technology, or the impact technology is having on other areas of business. Here are a few of the trends we can expect this year:

    Working remotely is the new normal for many business people today. But with everyone spread apart, how do you keep everyone on the same page? And how do you create a cohesive team when some of the team members don’t get to interact with each other on a regular basis? It's a common challenge; one that I face too.

You’ve had an IT manager for the last 15 years, and he’s (or she's) just told you that he’s retiring. He knows your business and your systems intimately – he might have even built them! So, how will you fill his shoes? How will you get what you need once when he’s gone?

Collaboration and connectivity are increasingly important in today’s world. It seems like every day there is a new tool or system for taking, sharing, and collaborating on notes. Each of these promises to make everything we have documented accessible any time, anywhere – and for the most part, that’s possible.

Information technology (IT) exists to help us be more productive and to make life easier. Software tools are critical for businesses to stay ahead – or at least on pace – with their competition. The challenge is that many still see IT as an obstacle; a necessary evil that all-too-often finds itself in the wrong column of the company balance sheet.

Every business wants to reduce its costs. Over the years, I’ve talked to hundreds of Southern California business executives and many of them are concerned about what they’re paying for IT Support Agreements. The conversation goes in one of two directions: either their provider is doing a good job, so they feel like it must be easy, or they aren’t doing a good job and the executive feels like they’re paying a lot for little gain. If you’re happy with your current IT services vendor but it seems like your costs are going up, it’s natural to evaluate where your money is going, and to look for ways to bring expenses down. Is there a way to reduce IT support contract, or IT services agreement, costs? Here are a few things to dig into to answer that question.