Ferrum Technology Services Blog

Collaboration is critical to the success of businesses both big and small, from the newest of startups to the grandest of enterprises. It’s true that there are very few businesses that are successful without collaboration, yet on an organizational level, there is a lot to consider when planning it out. It’s time to take a close look at what collaboration means for businesses, as well as how it can be leveraged in just about any form.

The cloud gives businesses just like yours the tools to become more productive throughout the workday, but no two organizations are the same. Your business’ needs will differ from others like you. How can you make sure that you have the tools needed to get the most out of your workday? You can start by implementing the right technology solutions--namely, the cloud, which can make communication and collaboration much more efficient as a whole.

Has your business taken measures to protect its future from unfortunate events? By this, we mean any situation where your business faces certain annihilation at the hands of a data loss incident, natural disaster, or user error situation. Of course, data backup doesn’t necessarily have to be preventative in these instances. In fact, it can provide a return on investment simply by existing during normal operations.

Collaboration fuels business more than ever before. Now there are software titles dedicated to promote the highest degrees of collaboration possible, while also giving users the access to the tools they need to stay productive. Today, we will look at collaboration apps to give you an idea whether or not they are right for your business.

Being in business today means that you have a lot on your plate, it’s as simple as that. Yet, with so many tasks piling up, it can be challenging to prioritize them all so you can figure out where to start. Below, we go over some strategies you can use to make sense out of all the tasks you have on your day and reach a point of productivity.

There is a special kind of frustration that comes from a slow computer. We think it’s a combination of being unable to get something done combined with your computer’s inability to take a hint and register your frustration as you furiously click your mouse. Either way, slow computers are annoying. Fortunately, there are some steps you can take to speed things up before you consider throwing it out a window.

Unless your business is a sole proprietorship, chances are you rely on employees in order to keep operations going. Your team needs to work together to make this happen as efficiently as possible, and a common goal helps motivate them toward this end. You can use collaboration technology to help your team do their jobs more effectively. This can have far-reaching benefits for both the performance of your employees and business operations in general.

Vendors can be impossible to deal with, and this problem escalates when you have quite a lot of them. Every service or product your business takes advantage of comes from a vendor, and if you have to work directly with them every time something goes awry, you’re looking at a lot of wasted time and effort. Thankfully, there’s an easier way to work with your vendors, and ironically, it involves not working with them at all--but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. There’s a process you need to go through before you can most efficiently take advantage of vendor management services.

Microsoft Office 365 might look like Microsoft Office, but it has many other features that allow you to make your documents and services more accessible and collaborative than the standard desktop application would. This week’s tip is dedicated to helping you get the most out of the features of Office 365--particularly in regard to Microsoft Word.

Spring is traditionally a time of rebirth and renewal, which has inspired the tradition of spring cleaning - starting fresh and organized after long months of darkness and cold. While the home is the traditional target of spring cleaning, people spend enough time at the office to make some cleaning worth it. In this blog, we’ll go over the benefits of a clean office, as well as how to achieve one.

It is an expectation for the modern business to rely on the Internet in order to complete its daily function. As a result, anytime there is an Internet outage, many employees may find themselves lacking purpose or direction. However, a lack of Internet doesn’t have to mean a lack of productivity. For this week’s tip, we’ll review some ways your staff can be productive without an Internet connection.

Every business has IT projects they want to complete. Whether it is a small change like introducing a public cloud platform, or a large one like migrating all your data from four servers onto one, you have to expect situations will arise that will make you want to pull your hair out. To overcome the challenges that come with any major IT project, consider these four points.

If you’ve ever managed a major IT project, you’re probably well acquainted with Murphy’s Law: “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” Every project is going to have some rough patches. The key to overcoming these challenges lays not with the execution of the plan, but with the preparation. Here are four things to consider when you’re planning out your next long-term IT project.

It would be hard to find someone who has never experienced the feeling of a time crunch, a situation where someone has more to do than they had hours to do it in. This feeling can be reduced by enhancing productivity through better time management. For our tip this week, let’s discuss some methods to improve time management within your office.

With productivity being so important in the modern business, it only makes sense that so much of the technology we have now--and will likely have in the future--is devoted to maximizing the amount of work that can be accomplished by one person in a given time. While not everything we will discuss is always relevant for the typical SMB, if your business continues to grow, more technologies will only become accessible over time. Here are a few technology tips to increase your organization’s productivity.

How do you refer to your group of employees? If you’re like most businesses, you call your employees your ‘team.’ This only makes sense, as a team is meant to work together toward a common goal. But what if your team isn’t acting very much like one?

How many monitors do you use? How many do your employees use? If they only have one monitor to be productive with, it could be hampering their ability to work efficiently. By incorporating a second monitor you can provide the construct to overhaul your employee’s productivity and efficiency.

Workplace meetings have a reputation of being a minor, yet necessary inconvenience. Although, that doesn’t mean meetings can’t be improved upon and made less annoying and more productive. With the following tips and tricks, you can approach your meetings differently and get the most out of them.

Productivity suites are a common sight, if not being entirely necessary for the modern business. You need the word processing power and the ability to provide an email solution to your organization’s staff so they can communicate internally and externally. We’ll discuss two of the most renown productivity suites--Office 365 and Google’s G Suite--and why your business will need what they offers.

There are two types of people in the world; those who can read and accomplish work while on the go, and those who can’t. For the folks in the latter camp, it’s not that they don’t want to be productive while traveling, but rather, they physically can’t. This unfortunate condition is commonly referred to as motion sickness, and if you suffer from it, then it’s quite literally “all in your head.”