Additionally, we would like to thank everyone who filled out our Customer Satisfaction Survey. Your point of view was helpful. About 95% of respondents gave TechSolutions an excellent overall score, which is great. If you did have questions, made suggestions, or gave us a score indicating we needed to improve, we will be calling or may have already called to follow up. We would love to follow up with each person individually, but we thought the survey was a more efficient approach.

Now, it is time to plan for and consider how we are going to go back to work. We have options, and we have time to consider them. We are all about keeping your computer network, your data, and your team safe. You decide what is best for your business, but we want to be ready to help.

• Before COVID-19, you may have had only a few people set up properly to work remotely. Now, that thinking might be different. Some businesses will return to the office in rotating shifts by selecting specific groups to work in the office 2-3 days a week. We suggest considering who will need ongoing “work at home status” in your organization. Then, we will assess the current remote access solution to ensure it meets the ongoing demands required by your specific organization. Some businesses will need a more robust solution to permanently support the new normal.

• In the rush to move home, our top priority was getting your teams operating. Sometimes, individuals selected software that was easy for the short term but may not have been the right option for long term. For example, should you be using Zoom or Teams or GoToMeeting? We want to help you think through your remote software choices to consider things such as collaborative features, usability features, and cybersecurity strengths.

• The results of our survey show that the number one issue for people working at home has revolved around the lack of copiers and scanners. We are looking at options to help those who need additional equipment at home. There are options that are more productive and affordable than others, so we should definitely discuss them before making a purchase.
  Most importantly, keep us in the loop. Please share your plans and we can make sure we are ready to help!

Finally, over the next two weeks, we are going to send you cybersecurity reminders. These reminders are meant to reinforce basic practices and habits regarding working from home and keeping your data safe. Cybercriminals will adjust their techniques and become more adept at targeting remote workers. We want you to be as prepared as possible. These are interesting times. Please call us or send us a note. We’d love to hear from you and help you in any way we can!

The post When It’s Time to Go Back to the Office … We Are Ready to Help! appeared first on TechSolutions, Inc..

Those 2019 predictions are great, but they don’t really directly affect the average person much. What about tech trends that will have an immediate impact on our clients, specifically the Office Managers that keep everything running so smoothly?

1. The C-Suite sees two major risks much more clearly. Cybersecurity and MeToo!
2018 gave management a much more tangible understanding to two powerful trends that can impact the executive team of any business. Cybersecurity, electronic eavesdropping, international business espionage, liability for data breach, and the impact of the MeToo movement. Senior managers of large and small businesses can see the devastating impact of both trends on the business and the lives of the senior managers. IT and HR policies are changing. The momentum for change will carry over in 2019.

2. Stress on the IT Budget. A lot more to do and a little bit higher budget. With a strong economy, the IT budget predictably expands as growth and business opportunities require additional capital. But, this year is not a normal year. We saw 2018 as a year of growth, and as a result, now there is extraordinary pressure on the IT budget. Why? First, 2019’s growth is less certain than 2018’s with pressure to take greater profits and build cash reserves. Second, the IT budget must take on additional security requirements that don’t add to top line sales or productivity. The next step in innovation and security improvement is expensive. Therefore, we see increases in IT budget and extra pressure on IT in the same year. It looks like a challenging year.

3. Employee Experience … seeking happy employees in an era of low unemployment. The competition to recruit and retain millennials, the biggest age group in the workforce, led to new changes in the office. Businesses will be competing for talent by offering a better employee experience. This can lead to offering more than pay raises to key staff. Small to mid-sized businesses are considering the emotional, physical, financial, and professional needs of the staff to develop “well-being” strategies. This means more work-at-home days to save travel time, more flexibility with schedules, and newly added services including financial advisors, gym subsidies, discounted products/services, and even debt counseling and student loan forgiveness programs. Companies are getting creative!

4. “Autonomous Devices” quietly start to positively impact the office. Consumers are focused on automated cars, household robots, delivery drones, and smarter appliances. In the business sector, data management devices and computer agents will quietly gain strength in the workplace in a big way this year. In 2019, we will coordinate intelligence, data, hardware, and software to automate tasks that will do more to improve productivity and reduce costs. Gartner admits this seems like a broad claim, but it is happening faster that most of us think. Every IoT device, application, and service is going to get smarter and perform more tasks self-sufficiently. In fact, TechSolutions is already using automated agents that function to protect your company’s network. Our newest security technology uses autonomous agents that automatically scan business applications for a new class of embedded malware, and we are rolling out these agents to provide real-time protection against unauthorized network access 24×7 with little supervision needed. They’re here!

5. Big Data becomes Augmented and Accessible Analytics: We now understand that valuable data is collected with every online transaction, web search, and cloud application used. We also know that there is more data than we have time to organize and integrate into our decision-making processes, especially in small to mid-size businesses … until 2019. This year, data management techniques begin to really change. New tools will make it easier to automate the collection, organization, and analysis of business data. Automated analysis of business data has several benefits. Not only is it fast and efficient, many experts believe it will remove bias associated with traditional management analysis. In the upcoming years, 40% of data tasks will be automated for business managers. Business Intelligence tools and intelligent dashboards will give managers more and more help as the years continue. Get started on this one now!

6. Privacy: The “Who Cares” vs “You Can’t Do That” movements battle to define acceptable. When two trends collide, it usually results in confusion until it’s all worked out. Millennials continue to share almost everything on social media, and they are willing to surrender personal data for shiny objects. They continue to demonstrate a lower sensitivity to data privacy. They are numb to the calls for greater data security. On the opposite side, governments across the world are following the EU and create mandating standards for data privacy and new laws to protect consumers. Delaware is no exception. The result is a period of chaos while the real standard for data privacy is worked out. For small to mid-sized businesses, it can be difficult to understand the required protections that need to be in place, as well as the actions that need to be taken when a breach occurs. Experts predict that workplace policies, standard operating procedures, and acceptable risk will be difficult to define this year and even more challenging to enforce. Business leaders need to consult with the people they trust and make complicated decisions on data protection policies and strategies for their companies. Then they need to enforce and follow through on those decisions.

7. Cybersecurity will require more from users … two-factor authentication for everything?

As owners and managers come to understand the threat of cybertheft and the impact of a data breach, better employee awareness training will not be enough for many firms. Concepts like cyber hygiene are beginning to develop. Smart business owners will demand stronger security measures take effect soon, and we believe this will require more involvement from their computer users. This year, computer users will be required to play a bigger role in their own security. This changes a decade long trend of fighting the cyber security battle inside the computer and behind the scenes. This year, the battle will require more users to make use of biometrics, to take additional steps during the login process, to use more complicated password protocols, and to submit to a more deliberate process for password resets. We will start to see the end of single-factor authentication. We can look for the end of simple passwords which historically have been the keys to the kingdom for the bad guys. We expect to see multi-factor authentication implemented for almost everything that is important. This is the year the trend shifts, and employees join the cybersecurity battle.

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