The ACCENT Learning Hub

When you sent your employees home to work because of COVID-19, you probably found out just how flexible or inflexible your phone system could be. The experience either helped you to keep communications going or caused frustration for employees and customers alike. Having a reliable, stable phone system can provide a competitive advantage and can be critical to your business’ operations. Because modern phone systems can be integrated into so many other technology tools that your people are using, phones aren’t just what you use to talk to somebody. If fact, they can actually enable the kind of communications that help people work together.

These days, more and more companies are being required to comply with regulations for security, even if they're not in a regulated industry. Specifications for NIST compliance, to name one, are flowing down the supply chain and in order to continue to do business with your customers, you may be required to prove compliance with their security standards.

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.

Whether your company has 15 employees or 50,000, it is imperative that your technology consistently works how it’s supposed to. You need a clear vision of where technology is going in your business, and you need to get rid of roadblocks that are holding the company back from achieving its goals.

We’re living in a time where cybercrime and ransomware attacks are announced like the next big box office hit. They’re making an impact worldwide, and it’s causing many businesses to suffer downtime, loss of business, and increased costs to recover from attacks. One of the most common types of scams affecting businesses is referred to as phishing. Phishing attacks are generally emails that entice users to perform an action, like clicking a link to an infected webpage, opening a malicious attachment, or even wiring money.

Technology gives us the ability to market our businesses in many ways. One way that has been around for decades is the “on-hold” recording for your phone system. It’s one of the most underappreciated methods for showcasing your company and making sure callers have a good experience.

Cybercrime and ransomware attacks have become commonplace in society today. The impact is worldwide, causing headaches and financial troubles for many businesses and consumers. So, how do you stay safe from these threats? Here are a few tips to keep your personal information out of the wrong hands.

I got an email the other day from a friend in one of my networking groups. The subject line read, “Please sign - You have received a secure document via DocuSign.” Alarm bells went off in my mind because I was not expecting an email like this from her. Further investigation revealed that this was a “phishing” email – a kind of scam where unscrupulous individuals try to capture information by pretending they’re someone they are not.

I’m sure you’ve heard the terms “backup,” “disaster recovery,” and “business continuity.” What most business owners do not realize is that these are three separate things and without all three pieces, their business is in a vulnerable position. Data Backup First off, data backup is just copying your data onto another device. This could be a tape drive, an external hard drive, or an offsite backup. In most of these forms, your data is being stored in a raw format. This means that your applications, configurations, and network settings are not being backed up with it, so if you needed to restore, or recover, your network from the data backup, you may be down for days or weeks.

Did you make any new year's resolutions as the calendar turned over to 2019? In addition to the usual personal resolutions, such as eating healthy and spending more time with family, I encourage business owners and managers to add a few business resolutions to their list. Information technology is critical to operations for most companies and has the power to stop, or at least disrupt, business if things aren’t going well. When utilized properly, information technology can give companies a strategic advantage and help them accomplish their business goals and objectives.