Make Sure a Weather Event Doesn’t Permanently Damage Your Business

Don’t wait until a nasty storm is headed your way to think about how you’ll protect your computer equipment from an extreme weather event. A little bit of planning can help so that, in the event of a real emergency, you’ll have a specific to-do list that will keep you on track and increase the chances that your business can recover quickly from any physical damage to your office.

 

1.      Determine how you’re going to handle incoming phone calls and try to find a line that’s more likely to stay in service. Can you redirect calls to an out-of-state branch office? How about redirecting them to your cell phone or the phones of other key employees? (This of course won’t be very helpful if nearby cell phone towers get knocked out.) Another solution is to engage an answering service to mind the phones until you’re back online.

2.      Run a “fire drill” on your offsite backups and make sure they’re capable of a full system restore.

3.      Make sure your most important business documents – articles of incorporation, tax records, contracts, software licenses, and so on – are in a flood-proof, fireproof storage container and consider keeping it offsite.

4.      When you leave the office, power off your workstations first, then your servers, then your network equipment. If you use a VoIP phone service, your phone system is connected through your Internet service and will not work after you power down your network equipment.

5.      After the storm passes through, power up your equipment in the reverse order.

 

This is a link to a hurricane preparedness checklist, but it’s really applicable to all sorts of weather and emergency events: http://www.cdera.org/doccentre/fs_checklist_biz.php

 

One of the best things you can do to help preserve your critical business data — and make sure it’s retrievable even if your physical office ever suffers from significant physical damage — is to use a secure offsite backup. Find out more about CMIT’s offsite backup and disaster recovery solutions here: www.cmitsolutions.com/indianapolis/guardian.php.

How Do You Know Which Payroll Option Is Right For You?

One of your biggest responsibilities as a small business owner is paying your employees and staying current with federal, state, and local taxes and regulations. If you don’t have an accounting or bookkeeping background, taking care of payroll can feel pretty overwhelming. Fortunately, you’ve got a number of options when it comes to keeping on top of payroll.

 

First — and these days, this is really only an option for somebody with minimal bookkeeping requirements — you can do it the old-fashioned way, writing out paper checks by hand and keeping your records in a ledger or spreadsheet. You have full control over your payroll, but you can find yourself spending way more time on it than you bargained. Additionally there’s a pretty wide margin for error, especially if you’re going back and forth between paper checks and Excel spreadsheets. And you’re on the hook for calculating and sending in regular tax payments to the government.

 

Next, you can hire an accountant or bookkeeper. You’ll definitely benefit from the services of an expert — but depending on their hourly rate, they can be more or less of a bargain. Additionally, if you need to confer with the accountant before releasing checks, this can drag out the schedule for one-off checks such as bonuses or expense reimbursements.

 

Another option is to purchase payroll software such as Intuit QuickBooks. That way, all your payroll calculations are automated and the software keeps track of what you owe in taxes and when you need to pay them. However, it will take some time to master the software.

 

A traditional payroll service, such as QuickBooks Payroll or ADP, or a local payroll company, takes payroll out of your hands. All you have to do is provide basic information, such as time worked, and the service calculates taxes, files taxes on your behalf, and delivers paychecks. The downside is that the service is definitely more expensive than a DIY solution and usually more expensive than software. You’ll have less control and flexibility overall.

 

As a technology service provider, CMIT Solutions doesn’t offer accounting advice — but we can put you in touch with a solution that would best meet your needs. Whether it be a local payroll company we work with, or a small-business accounting software and payroll vendor such as Intuit or ADP.  Call us at (317) 566-9622 to find out more about the accounting software packages we offer through Intuit and other available services.

How to Solve IT Scheduling Nightmares

Make Your Internal IT Department More Productive, Efficient, and Effective – Without Adding Headcount or New Vendors

 

If you’ve got an in-house IT staff, you know how hard it is to coordinate all of the many tasks regularly assigned to your technical gurus. More often than not, techs deal with problems on a first-come, first-served basis — or according to the “squeaky wheel” principle, where whoever yells the loudest gets the most attention.

 

This can result in unhappy employees, an overworked and harried IT staff, and a feeling that everybody’s struggling to keep up with IT demands instead of actually getting ahead and concentrating on projects that can really help out the whole business instead of a few individuals.

 

What you need is a way to prioritize tasks, also known as “tickets,” and coordinate schedules so that technicians, non-technical employees, and management all have a clear picture of who’s working on what. 

 

Well, we’ve finally found a way – and we wanted you to be the first to know about it. Today we’re announcing the release of CMIT Service Center, a new add-on product to the award-winning external IT service desk management software that’s already available when you sign up for CMIT Marathon. CMIT Service Center lets you log and track internal IT service requests, distribute those requests to the most appropriate person (whether it’s in-house staff or CMIT technicians), and create custom follow-on questions and workflow rules to suit the unique demands and structure of your business. In essence, it takes all those coordination and scheduling capabilities you enjoy when you work with CMIT technicians and brings them in-house.

 

CMIT Service Center lets you streamline and formalize the internal service ticket process — resulting in real accountability, better service, and more efficient use of your IT staff and resources. Sounds pretty good, right? Call (317) 566-9622 or visit www.cmitsolutions.com/indianapolis/servicecenter.php to learn more.

Don’t Ever Lose Your Laptop Again

A study released last year by the Ponemon Institute revealed that business travelers lost a truly shocking number of laptops at airports every week: about 12,000, by their count. (http://www.darkreading.com/security/encryption/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=211201139)

 

Even with fewer business travelers flying this year, you can bet that laptop losses are still far too many — especially considering that 65 percent of survey respondents who said they were carrying confidential information didn’t take any measures to protect it. That’s a whole lot of sensitive information just floating around out there because somebody got careless in the airport security line.

 

So the next time you take your computer with you on a business trip, remember two basic principles: prevention and mitigation.

 

First, prevent laptop loss by giving yourself plenty of time at the airport, making sure you pack lightly so that you’re not overwhelmed by your luggage, and keeping an eye on your computer as you go through security and boarding. (The two most common places people lose computers are in security checkpoints and at gates.)

 

To mitigate laptop loss, encrypt and back up all your important files. That way, if you do lose your computer you’ll minimize the risk that confidential company information will end up in the wrong hands, and you’ll be able to quickly rebuild your files and get back to work.

 

If you take all these precautions and still, at the end of a business trip, discover that your laptop has wandered off for parts unknown, it helps to have a theft-recovery system like Absolute Software’s Computrace LoJack for Laptops installed. If your laptop goes missing, Absolute personnel can start working with local law enforcement to find it. Your computer automatically calls in to the Monitoring Center once a day, but you can increase that to once every 15 minutes if your computer is stolen. Once your computer checks in with the Monitoring Center, they can initiate a data delete to remove sensitive information – hopefully before the thief is able to access it.

 

The Computrace LoJack for Laptops comes embedded in Dell Latitude™ notebooks and Dell Precision™  Mobile Workstations. It can also be purchased as a standalone product.

 

As a Dell Certified Partner, we can give you expert advice on what Dell laptop is right for you and your business. Call us at (317) 566-9622 to find out more.

Every Remote Office Needs an Online Conference Room

Online conferencing allows people to meet, collaborate, and exchange ideas without having to be in the same place – which comes in handy when corporate travel budgets take a hit.

 Combine reduced travel allowances with many smaller businesses’ decision to downsize or even eliminate their physical offices to save on rental costs, and you can see why online conferencing is getting popular again. Not only does it allow for realtime collaboration, it can also allow you to record and replay meetings and presentations for people who couldn’t make it to the original event. You may not have all your employees in the same place at the same time anymore, but you can make it easier for them to communicate like they are.

 So how do you evaluate a Web conferencing service? Here are a few suggestions:

 1. Determine your needs and priorities. Do you need a bare-bones service that offers basic desktop sharing, or do you need something more elaborate, with bells and whistles like polling, streaming audio, and document sharing?

2. Determine what platforms it needs to run on: Windows, Mac, Linux, or all of the above.

3. Watch providers’ online demos. You can read all the white papers and datasheets you want, but you won’t know what a product really feels like until you see it in action.

4. Pay attention to customer service. If they don’t respond quickly to your concerns as a potential customer, they might not respond any faster once you’ve signed up.

5. Compare pricing. Most services charge by the month and offer a discounted annual plan.

 If you’ve got questions about how to set up a remote office, call us at (317) 566-9622. We can help with virtual private networks, remote access, security, and more.

Leasing vs. Buying: What You Need to Know

It’s just a good sound business practice to keep a healthy cushion of cash on hand at all times. And with credit markets tight, you need to keep what credit reserves you have for real emergencies.

 

At the same time you’re attending to cash flow issues, you’ve also got to keep on top of your computers and IT infrastructure in order to keep your business running smoothly. So how do you meet technology demands while keeping cash on hand? Leasing presents one good financing option for many small businesses.

 

When you buy equipment, it’s yours forever. But when it comes to computers, the pace of innovation is so rapid that owning equipment “forever” doesn’t always make sense. Leasing lets you acquire equipment at a fixed, affordable monthly cost, leaving bank credit and cash reserves free for other expenses. You can upgrade or refresh technology whenever you need to, instead of trying to extract value from old or out-of-date equipment. And some providers will finance not only the lease but also installation and configuration, so that you can roll up all the costs of a technology refresh into a single payment.

           

	Leasing	Buying
Initial investment	Lower	Higher
Soft costs (taxes, shipping, installation)	Payable over time	Payable immediately
Predictability of expenses	Very predictable	Variable
Risk of obsolescence	Low	High
Preserves bank credit	Yes	No
Preserves available cash	Yes	No

 

A potential down side of leasing is that, depending on the length of the lease, you may ultimately pay more for an item than you would if you paid for it outright. This is particularly true of longer-term leases. You should also consider the residual value of the equipment at the end of the lease. Equipment value declines over time, so a shorter-term lease results in fewer payments with a higher-value asset at the end, as well as lower risk of obsolescence.

 

Remember, there may be tax implications to consider for either option. You may want to consult with your accountant to determine the best fit for you.

 

If you want to learn more about financing options available through CMIT Solutions, give us a call at (317) 566-9622.

What’s the Difference Between a Consultant and a Contractor?

Picture it: You’re a small business with 10 or so users, getting by without a full-time IT support person. When you have problems, you call up an independent contractor who acts as your go-to computer guy.

 

It’s the Friday before a three-day weekend and you’ve got a big problem. Your server just crashed, your backups aren’t working, your contractor has left town for the weekend — and you’ve got to be open for your annual sale at 8am sharp on Saturday morning. What do you do?

 

You can call up another contractor and see if they’re available. But if you’d hired a consultant from the beginning, you might never have experienced this unfortunate chain of events.

 

Computer consultants combine deep technology expertise with a keen understanding of business practices in order to help businesses make responsible, strategic decisions about their IT infrastructure. They’re more likely to recommend practices and products that help you to avoid emergencies from occuring in the first place.

 

Independent IT contractors, on the other hand, tend to focus on immediate solutions to short-term problems. They can help get your server back online, and they can probably salvage your backups — but they might not bring up the issue of long-term planning. This doesn’t mean that they’re irresponsible or unknowledgeable; far from it. It’s just that their focus is on your technology, not your business.

 

And this is the difference between contractors and consultants. A great contractor is a whiz at mitigating emergency issues and fixing what breaks. A great consultant looks ahead and sees how you can get out of that cycle of breaking and fixing, and on the path to consistently high levels of service.

 

In many situations, your contractor and your consultant may be the same person. But you absolutely need that consultative approach if you’re ever going to get out ahead of your technology problems.

 

Think of technology not as a business expense, but as an asset. The right IT setup can have a tremendous effect on productivity and actually help your business to grow. When you look at it that way, your “computer guy” shouldn’t just be the cheapest service you can find in the Yellow Pages; it should be somebody whose expertise and opinions you truly trust.

 

“Computer consultants provide the exact same kind of services and expertise, the same intellectual property that engineers or architects do,” says CMIT Solutions client Darwin Smith, of the Lake Stevens Sewer District in Lake Stevens, Washington. “That’s a departure from the way people have looked at it and the way government has looked at it, but that is the way to look at it, and that is the way to approach hiring IT people.”

 

If you’re looking for fewer IT emergencies, consistently high levels of service, and predictable expenses, CMIT Solutions can act as your computer consultant. Call us at (317) 566-9622 or go to www.cmitsolutions.com/indianapolis/z-contact-us.php and we’ll schedule an in-depth review of your technology systems. After that, we’ll give you our expert recommendation about how you can start getting more out of your IT infrastructure.

Don’t Fall for Scam Emails About the Swine Flu

When the swine flu outbreak hit the news recently, word of the illness wasn’t the only thing spreading rapidly around the globe. As usual, online identity thieves took advantage of bad news to launch a number of phishing and malware attacks.

 

Some phishing emails contained subject lines claiming that President Barack Obama or an assortment of celebrities were infected with the flu. The bodies of these emails contained links to sites that claimed to sell swine flu remedies. Victims who filled out the order form for these “remedies” in effect handed over their personal identifying information to data harvesters who will resell that information on the black market.

 

Other swine flu-related spam contained infected ZIP files that purported to offer important information from the government about the outbreak. When opened, the files downloaded a malicious executable file to start stealing information.

 

One last trick involved a “survey” that asked people to share their swine flu experiences by providing their phone number or email address – which the spammer would then harvest and later sell or use for their own purposes.

 

In essence, what we’re seeing here is spammers and phishers getting a little more creative about how they go about collecting information. Not only do they use a news event to frighten people into opening their emails, they then use topical “sales pitches,” presentations, and surveys that could fool even a fairly savvy email user. They also tend to use links to malicious sites rather than asking people to open files, since many email providers automatically block attachments from unknown senders.

 

To avoid becoming the victim of identity theft due to swine flu emails, you can do a couple of things:

 

1. Don’t open email from an unknown or unsolicited sender.
2. Rely on reputable news sources for information and updates about the flu.
3. Make sure your antivirus and antispyware definitions are up to date and run a full system scan.

 

If you want one less security issue to worry about, you can always sign up for a service like CMIT Marathon that automatically takes care of all your updates and scans for you. To find out more, click here.

Banish Digital Clutter in 4 Simple Steps

Even people with tidy desks and pin-neat offices sometimes find themselves with a whole lot of clutter – on their hard drives. But just because storage is cheap these days doesn’t mean you need to have a lot of spare bits and bytes hanging around. Keeping extra files on your hard drive can make it difficult to get to the information you want, leading to lost or duplicated files and a lot of wasted time. Here are a few simple ways you can keep your files in order.

 

1. Delete, delete, delete.

You know the old adage about clothes: If you haven’t worn something in a year, throw it out. The same might apply to your computer files. If you haven’t opened something in a year, you’re probably safe throwing it out. At the very least, you can take everything you’re not one hundred percent sure you’re comfortable deleting and stick it all in a folder called “Archive.”

2. Use shortcuts instead of making duplicate files.

If you’re working on several projects that all work off the same document, don’t keep a copy of the document in each project folder. Instead, decide which folder you’ll keep the original in and create shortcuts to that original in every other folder. That way you don’t have to worry about versioning problems.

3. Use descriptive file names.

This sounds simple, but it’s shocking how many people name important documents things like “Report.doc”. Put enough identifying detail in the file name that you’ll be able to discern the contents at a glance.

4. Don’t save what you don’t need.

If a coworker sends you a file for review, chances are you download it, make some notations, re-save, and send it back. Once you’ve sent it, there’s no reason to keep that file hanging around. Create a folder for these sorts of one-off files and then empty it at the end of every week by either deleting the file or, if it’s important, moving it to the appropriate directory.

Attention Teleworkers: Keep Keyloggers from Stealing Your Data

More workers than ever are ditching the office and working from home, on the road, or from client sites. According to WorldatWork, occasional telework has risen dramatically in just the past several years. Look at these statistics:

 

• The number of employee telecommuters in the United States increased 39%, from 12.4 million to 17.2 million, between 2006 and 2008.
• The sum of all teleworkers — employees, contractors and business owners — increased 43% from 2003 to 2008, reaching 33.7 million last year. 
• Fewer people are teleworking full time; however, more people are working remotely at least once a month. 
• The most common locations for remote work are home (87%), a customer’s place of business (41%) and car (37%). Restaurants and libraries are becoming less common locations for telecommuting.

 

If you are one of the millions of people remotely accessing a business network — whether it’s every day or just once a month — you need to be aware of the security threat posed by keyloggers.

 

A keylogger is a piece of software that records every keystroke made on a computer. A hacker who installs a keylogger virus on your computer will be able to see everything you type on your machine — which comes in handy when they want to steal passwords, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, or sensitive corporate data.

 

For years, cybercriminals have been installing keylogger viruses on easy-to-breach, publicly accessed machines, such as those used in libraries. But your worry as a telecommuter probably won’t be whatever viruses are crawling all over a publicly used machine — as statistics show, you’re almost definitely using your own computer or a company-provided one for business work. So what you have to beware of is a whole new round of viruses that can be downloaded to your work machine.

 

Remember that Conficker worm that was supposed to strike on April Fool’s Day, and ended up exploding about a week later? One of its most devastating payloads was a keylogger virus.

 

So to protect yourself from keyloggers stealing your passwords, don’t ever use public computers for any procedure that requires a login — that means everything from checking email to checking a bank balance. And on your own computer, make sure your antivirus and antispyware definitions are up to date and that you regularly run full system scans. (Many people halt system scans midway through or just stop running them altogether because they take up so much processing power.) If you want one less security issue to worry about, you can always sign up for a service like CMIT Marathon that automatically takes care of all your updates and scans for you. To find out more, click here.