How Managed IT Services Can Help You With Multitasking

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The definition of multitasking is the performance of more than one task at the same time. The brain must rapidly switch between task to task. Depending on how many tasks you’re trying to accomplish and how difficult those tasks are, the less effectively the brain can switch between them, resulting in a possible decrease in performance. For the majority of people, the idea of multitasking can be quite difficult. About 2.5% of people can manage more than one task at a time. Continue reading to learn how this relates to you and your organization.

How Does Multitasking Relate to Managed Services?

As previously mentioned, attempting to accomplish many things at one time and juggling from task to task can have a negative impact on productivity and efficiency. As a business owner, you have innumerable responsibilities on your hands. An extremely important task that you must deal with is making sure that all employees are doing what they need to do to accomplish the goals of the entire company. Although you have to delegate some responsibilities to management to ensure business operations run smoothly, you still have to make sure that managers are doing what is expected of them. More than likely, you have to be the face of the company. This means that you’re likely to be involved with community outreach and communicating with clients and the select vendors that your organization works with. Other job tasks you may have include ensuring your company is following all the rules and regulations set by the city as well as the state and federal governments. Lastly, the direction of sales and marketing efforts of your company will also be under your discretion so you will also have to balance that responsibility.

It is evident that as a business owner, you have many responsibilities to juggle. Hopefully, multitasking comes easy for you. On top of all those responsibilities, you definitely can’t forget about IT support for your company. Technology is the backbone of an organization. Without it, business operations will more than likely fail. Or if you constantly have IT issues, productivity and efficiency will plummet tremendously. This is where managed IT services come in. By utilizing managed IT services, you will have less things to worry about as a business owner. Your employees will also not have to deal with any issues involving software, hardware or anything else related to IT since IT support will be a phone call away.

Managed Services Will Keep Your Company Supported and Secured

With AE Technology Group, your company’s IT infrastructure will be one less thing to worry about. This allows you to focus on the things that really matter within your organization. At AE Technology Group, we will be able to take care of any issues you or your employees may have, remotely. All you have to do is give us a call or send us an email. Give us a call today at (516) 536-5006 to learn more about how our managed IT services will be beneficial to your company.

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Your Business Can Benefit from RICE Prioritization Framework

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You may have heard of the RICE prioritization framework for developing new products, but we believe that it can be applied to not just products, but also to services and even project implementation practices. What is this framework, and how can you use it when developing new ideas for your business?

What Does the RICE Prioritization Framework Model Mean?

RICE stands for Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort. All of these work toward the success of any potential goods you offer or solution implementations. To get the greatest return on your investment and to improve the odds of success, you will want to take all of these factors into account. If done correctly, it will help you determine if what you want to do is actually a good idea.

Reach

Instead of thinking about which services you might use, think about the ones that most people within your target market will find useful or helpful. For technology, for example, you might not consider the solutions you yourself would use, but instead might focus your efforts on technology that would have the greatest reach within your organization. What could you implement that would be a game-changer for your staff?

Impact

Impact can be difficult to generalize, but we’ll do our best to explain it. Essentially, you are thinking of it in terms of how greatly a consumer or an employee is affected by the product, service, or solution you are trying to deploy. You might say, for example, that implementing a Voice over IP phone system would have a relatively high impact on your individual employees’ productivity.

Confidence

When you get excited to implement a solution or product, it’s easy to get caught up in it and throw all logical thinking out the window. Still, you should only be implementing solutions or putting out products/services that you have a high level of confidence in.

Effort

Finally, make sure that anything you choose to implement for your organization will be a worthwhile investment in terms of time and effort. Take a look at how long it will take to get the project off the ground, all while factoring in the amount of time you are investing into the research and planning phases.

AE Technology Group wants to help you implement new technology solutions for your business! Hopefully, this article helped you understand how the RICE Prioritization Framework can benefit your business. To learn more, reach out to us at (516) 536-5006.

Implementing the Best Technology Solutions for Your Business

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Technology is one of those parts of your operational infrastructure that plays a massive role, even if you don’t realize it. For quite some time, you’ve been using all of the standard fares for business technology, such as computers, server units, and networking components. All technology solutions for your business must eventually be replaced, so your company must have an established approach to make this happen in the most seamless and least stressful way possible.

It all starts by having a solid IT implementation strategy. Let’s take a look at some ideas you should consider when looking at your business technology strategy.

Identifying Your Technology Pain Points

When considering technology, you must think with intention. If you don’t, you might implement a “solution” that is entirely unnecessary and, thus, makes your network more complex or complicated than it needs to be. It is best to keep things simple when possible, as the more technology you implement for your business, the more opportunities there are for things to go wrong. To make sure you implement technology with intention, you must consider what problems the technology will solve.

Ask yourself, “What challenges does my business face today?” Your answer will determine which problems you want to solve.

Creating a Technology Plan and Moving Forward

Next, you want to consider how you proceed and what solution to implement. There are many choices to make, so you shouldn’t leave anything off the table. Consider multiple solutions to the problem and think about which one is appropriate for your specific needs.

Ask yourself, “How does my chosen option solve the specified problem?” If you can answer this question, then you know that you should seriously entertain implementing that option.

Implementing the Right Technology Solutions for Your Business

Now that you have determined which solution is the best forward, you can start the implementation process. This process might include a needs analysis or a cost breakdown, so whoever is in charge of the implementation process should have access to all of this information. Furthermore, you will also want to have a complete understanding of how much the solution will cost your business to implement and the expected timeline for that implementation.

Ask yourself, “Do I have the means to implement this technology?” If the answer is yes, then you can move forward with confidence.

Get Started Today!

AE Technology Group understands the frustrations of implementing new technology solutions for your business, so we make it our goal to provide accessible technology management and implementation services to all businesses, big or small. To learn more about how we can help your business get any technology solution off the ground, reach out to us at (516) 536-5006.

Working Together, Apart: The Office Guide to Social Distancing

social distancing

As many companies move into the next stage of a phased reopening plan, it’s an exciting time to get the team back together and return to business as usual. In the wake of COVID-19 and the new normal, use our office guide to social distancing to adapt, excel, and succeed together.

AE Technology Group is here to support our business clients in a successful reopening with these key tips on creating social distancing in any office space.

Lean, Mean, and Sparkling Clean

Although our offices may be running at half capacity until we slowly transition into a full workplace, there’s never been a greater need for cleanliness. Think beyond the recycling bin and develop a rotating schedule for disinfecting common areas. Frequently disinfect surfaces such as conference room tables, kitchen spaces, and front desks.

Remember that COVID-19 can survive for 24 hours to three days on hard surfaces! Daily cleaning proactively eliminates viral germs before they have time to spread. Divide tasks between in house staff members, bearing in mind flexible schedules as teams continue to increase hours. 

Consider temporarily removing shared coffee stations, microwaves, and community cupboards. As an alternative, treat your staff to a weekly local business luncheon and offer a coffee perk card instead of the traditional water cooler. Not only is this a great way to show your team how valuable they are, but it’s a responsible strategy for minimizing the spread of COVID-19.

Last but not least, please emphasize that everyone — yes, everyone — must wash their hands. 

Personal Space and the No Contact Bubble

Social distancing in the workplace is a simple matter of making the most of any space available. This may entail rearranging desks and cubicles to allow for the appropriate distancing of 6-feet apart. Considering establishing a sign-up sheet for conference rooms and limiting capacity to under ten individuals. Providing masks is a great idea to protect vulnerable workers, as well as utilizing plexiglass and other barriers to avoid direct peer-to-peer or client contact.

Small businesses may need to think outside the cubicle box and “create space” by employing back-to-back or side-to-side stations rather than front-facing ones whenever possible. Another tactic for reducing the number of people each person has contact with is to divide your staff into teams or partners so that each individual only works with 3-5 other individuals.

Provide hand sanitizer at all workstations and minimize shared devices such as phones by encouraging the use of headsets instead. Consider staggering shifts to avoid a crowd during the opening and closing hours. With a little teamwork, your company can enjoy a seamless reopening while doing your part to protect our staff and our clients.

Viruses: Not Just for People

Once you’ve implemented a germ proof social distancing plan, it’s time to take a look at technology considerations while returning to a new normal. Many staff members will likely still be working remotely for some portion of their workweek. Support your team by ensuring your network is encrypted with a strong firewall and confidential client information is well protected. Discourage the use of personal devices such as laptops, tablets, and phones for work purposes as these are often easily compromised and prone to viruses of the digital kind. Instead, assign laptops to each key member along with a list of available IT resources for training, troubleshooting, and more.

Stay connected with seamless all-in-one communication and project management software. Microsoft Teams is the number one choice for collaboration from conference calls to client meetings. Securely access and share files through SharePoint and OneDrive for added efficiency from home or anywhere in the office.

Technology Etiquette

Lastly, remember to be polite and mindful of your co-workers. With many employees working remotely for some time now, a lot of these behaviors may have slipped.

Need a little extra help migrating to a socially distant workspace?

Our experts are here to help with practical strategies for meeting your business’ technology needs and keeping everyone healthy, happy, and ready to crush that 9 to 5 grind.

The Modern Workplace and How Technology Has Affected It

how technology has affected the modern workplace

Throughout history, technology has continuously modified the way employees across every industry do their work. Not long ago, companies were in the mess of numerous paperwork. Heavy expenses were incurred so as to reach customers, memos had to be released and posted on notice boards, as well as numerous meetings in rooms. Nevertheless, technology has changed all of this and made work more comfortable. You now stand a chance to work in the comfort of your home effectively. Here are some of the ways in which technology has reshaped the modern workplace. 

Speed and Efficiency

Technology has made it possible for you to work faster and become more fruitful when working from home. Using modern software systems not only motivates you to do more work but also do a clean job. Unlike in the past, when you had to do a lot of paperwork, completing a task is now just a click away. 

Technology has streamlined how fast a certain task will be completed. It has become easy to track down how your colleagues are working and bring out better results together. Therefore, the ability to bring out fast and efficient results lies on the screen in front of you. 

Better Team Collaboration

Technology has dramatically changed the way people used to communicate. Smartphones, chat apps, and social networking sites have taken communication to another level. This makes it easy to get in touch with your colleagues and deliberate on how you can continue being more productive. 

Technology has also made it easier for managers to track the progress of every employee. This keeps every worker on their toes and ensures that all work is efficiently done and thus more output. Holding meetings has also become easy due to teleconferencing. This saves you not only time but also the extra expenses that would have been used to commute to the office.

Reduced Risk of Security Breaches

Initially stealing essential and sensitive information from a company was easy, but now with technology, it has almost become impossible to get such information. This is because proper security measures brought about by technology have been put in place.  

Technology has also made it possible for every employees’ conversations to be tracked. This ensures that no security breach is caused by any of your colleagues. When your company is secure, you also become secure in terms of your job. 

Effective Cost Management

Every company’s goal is to increase profitability as well as the quality of services offered. Now that technology has made working from home easy and effective, the overall expenses of the company have reduced. Manual handling of tasks has been eliminated and more efficient ways have been put in place

The use of computers while working from home helps you to get more accurate results, unlike when you had to do a lot of paperwork. Once accuracy has been achieved, there is an easy retrieval of information anytime it is needed. Besides, the work that could have been done by several people is easily done by one person in the comfort of their home. This helps to reduce many expenses in your company while achieving more profits. 

Keeps The Business Fully Organized

Technology makes it possible for the business to be well organized. When working from home, updating your progress and achievements on your company’s online data records brings out clear and clean work, unlike when using paperwork. This makes it possible to easily trace and know how well you are faring in line with the requirements of the company. 

Not only are you able to keep track of what you are doing, but also track how your collaborative workmates are doing too. This helps you to make comparisons and improve where necessary, thus increasing your productivity. 

Difficulty Detaching from Work

Working from home can be very enjoyable, especially now that we are living in a modern world. If not well planned, you may meet yourself working overtime and making it hard to break off from work. This becomes possible due to the beauty of working with modern tools, but it can bring about negative results when not carefully observed. 

In as much as you can do a lot of work when working from home, setting working hours and keenly following them is very crucial. This is because overworking leads to burnout and then, in turn, low productivity. Making sure that you take breaks from work is very vital and ends up increasing your productivity.

Technology has, therefore, made working from home not only possible but also effective and very fruitful.

To learn more about this, feel free to contact us today.