Blog

5 Ways To Prepare For A New IT Consulting Service

March 4, 2016 by eric

One of the best decisions that a growing business can make is to hire an IT consulting service in order to help them take care of technical issues and focus on the aspects of their business that they are experts in. As businesses grow and implement new processes and technology, there are many things that need to be taken into consideration in order to ensure that you are able to properly implement new technologies and troubleshoot issues that will inevitably arise. There are a few steps that any business should take before hiring an IT consulting service to ensure that they receive the best possible outcome.

Know What You Need

The first and most important step that you need to take is to outline what you need. What technologies are you currently working with? Of those technologies, which are the ones that result in the most ongoing problems for your business? By outlining the areas where you are having issues, you can seek out companies that will have expertise in those specific technologies. Not all IT consulting services are made equal, and you have to make sure that you are able to find a company that can help you to reach a wider audience.

Get to Know Them

Although many companies come to IT consulting companies during a crisis, the best step that you can take to ensure that your business is working with the right team is to take your time and get to know them before signing on the dotted line. If they offer a free consultation, take them up on it. Get a feel for the service that they provide. By planning ahead, you can make sure that you do not jump into an arrangement that you wish you had avoided. Business relationships are all about personalities, and you have to make sure that you are able to make smart decisions.

Outline Your Processes

In order to provide a complete picture of what your business needs, you need to outline your processes. There can be IT breakdowns in nearly any aspect of your business and the best way to avoid those issues is to prepare for them. Any good IT consulting company will be able to look at your processes and give you solid recommendations for preparing for disaster. But, you can make the job a lot easier for any IT consulting company by just taking the time to spell it out to the best of your ability for them. This helps them get to work right away!

Forecast Future Technologies

Does your business plan on implementing new technologies at some point in the near future? You’d be surprised how many companies know that they are going to be expanding to new tech but don’t make any mention of it when they seek out IT consulting companies. By letting your IT consultant know early, they will be able to put together a plan of action that helps your business grow.

Create a Wishlist

What do you want from your IT consultant? How can they help you out the most? By knowing and actively telling them how they can help you, they will be able to deliver an excellent, high quality service that helps you to reach your goals. Create a wishlist that will outline the needs of your business, and the hopes that you have when working with an IT consulting firm.

There are steps that any business should take before hiring an IT consulting company. By following these simple suggestions, you’ll enable your IT provider to offer a higher quality service and greatly streamline the onboarding process for both companies. Please contact us today to schedule a consultation with our IT consulting experts.

IT Consulting – Why It’s Important To Create And Test A Disaster Recovery Plan

February 17, 2016 by eric

Both modern information technology and IT consulting have been a boon to businesses, enabling them to process data quickly and efficiently. Computer networks, laptops and wireless devices are essentials in order to conduct business in the digital age. E-mail and VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) telephone systems are major forms of communication. All kinds of data (including orders and payments) are transferred from one business to another via Electronic Data Interchange (EDI). Servers process massive amounts of information and store large quantities of critical data. However, sometimes disaster strikes in a nanosecond and all this technology stops working.

A computer network crash is more than just a temporary misfortune as critical data is essential to the continued operation and even the survival of the affected business. The negative impact of data loss or corruption from hardware failure, human error, malware, or hacking is huge. An article in Information Week states that computer downtime adversely impacts US businesses to the tune of $26.5 billion per annum. A Pepperdine University report says that companies that suffer a network outage lasting longer than ten days never completely recover financially, and roughly fifty percent of them will go under within five years. Therefore, a plan to backup and restore digital information is crucial.

Does Your Business Have a Recovery Plan in Place?

If you do, that’s obviously a good thing, but then you need to determine if your plan is adequate. Here are some recommended steps to create or enhance a disaster recovery plan.

Examine your current plan (if you have one) and assess if the level of protection it provides is sufficient.
Work out the length of time your business can afford to have its computer network be down.
Determine how much data your business can afford to lose.
Look at your current backup system and determine whether it can be improved.
List all of your system’s critical components – servers, other hardware, and software applications.
Document the processes necessary to bring your server(s) back online.
Review your IT staff. Do they have the expertise to handle an unpredictable disaster? If you have a contract with an outside IT service, how fast can their personnel be at your offices?
If your company has on-site servers, look at the control room environment. Is it secure, does it have a backup power supply and effective climate control?

The Importance of Testing

There are quite a few excuses you can come up with for not testing a recovery plan on a regular basis – insufficient funds in the budget, workflow interruptions, not enough time, etc., etc. However, if you don’t test your plan, how do you know if it’s going to work? Don’t wait until disaster strikes to discover that your plan contains flaws. So, test your recovery system and find our how well it works (or doesn’t work) as soon as possible.

Virtual or Physical Servers?

Is it any help to have a mix of physical and virtual servers (which is common these days). The answer is no – accidental deletion of information on virtual servers happens just as often as on the physical type. And, bear in mind that physical servers often run your company’s most critical applications, such as the ones processing payroll data.

Assistance is Available

If designing and testing your own disaster recovery plan seems a little daunting, or you don’t have the staff or expertise to effectively handle the project, please talk to us. We can relieve you from worrying about network crashes and loss of data, ensure that you suffer only the absolute minimum of downtime and have you back up and operational again as quickly as possible.

Image Credit To: Elliot Margolies, A. Golden and Andrew Wippler

5 Tips To Facilitate The Best IT Consulting Experience

February 2, 2016 by eric

It is difficult to choose an IT consulting company but worthwhile task for any company that sees their IT requirements growing rapidly over time. There are many things that must be taken into consideration in order to ensure that you choose the best IT consulting company for your business, but many companies overlook how important it is that they come into their initial consultations prepared as well. It is difficult to evaluate how effective an IT provider will be without having a plan going into your initial consultations. Take these tips into account as you evaluate IT providers in your local area.

Learn about businesses you are considering partnering with

The first and most important step is to learn about the businesses that you are considering partnering with, just as they should learn about yours. This goes deeper than just reading reviews from previous customers. Learn about the person that you will schedule your consultation with, get to know their staff and learn about the successful previous projects they have worked on by reaching out to previous customers.

Come prepared to your initial consultation

Come to any initial consultation completely prepared. In fact, if you can be over-prepared, that is always better than being under-prepared. Take notes throughout the meeting so that you can ask pertinent questions. Come to the meeting with a list of questions that you would like to ask and play the meeting out in your mind before it takes place. The more relevant questions that you can ask, the better of an idea that you will have about the service that they provide and whether or not it will be a good fit for your business.

Outline your IT-related business goals

What kind of things would have to happen throughout your relationship with an IT service provider for you to consider it a success? Would you like to improve your response time to IT related issues? Would you like to iron out issues with processes in a new technology? Know exactly what you are looking to get out of a relationship so that you can make smart decisions that will help your own business reach its goals. By providing the company that you hire with these goals, they know where the line in the sand is and may be able to provide better IT service that is in line with your needs.

Choose a partner you are comfortable with

In the end, you should choose a company to partner with that you are comfortable with. Trust your instincts when choosing partners and avoid situations that make you apprehensive. Although “go with the gut” is cliche business advice, in situations that deal with ongoing long-term partnerships, you should always attempt to make a choice that you have confidence in, rather than choosing a partner that promises more but makes you a bit uncomfortable.

Know your budget

For an IT Consulting company to provide you with an accurate quote, you have to be able to provide your IT needs and budget. Outline your needs and total budget, then when the negotiations take place you can get an idea of what individual need will cost your company. This way, if all of your needs do not fall within your IT budget, you can make smart choices regarding which services to remove from your plan.

If you would like to schedule a consultation with our IT experts, please do not hesitate to contact us today. We’ll get to know your business and work with you to put together a customized plan that will cover your needs and help your company to grow in an organic way.

Image Credit To: Sebastiaan ter Burg

What Can The Cloud Do For You?

January 25, 2016 by eric

The cloud is no longer a new technology, but it continues to grow. The cloud can do so much for companies. There are numerous services available that can save companies money, energy, and time, and that can make their day-to-day operations run much more smoothly. Unfortunately, many of these services aren’t very well-known. So many businesses are missing out on these benefits because they don’t know they exist. Here are a few of the best services available on the cloud.

Storage

Storage may be what the cloud is most famous for. You may even have cloud storage already. If you don’t, you should definitely look into it. Cloud storage is one of the safest ways to keep up with your data. When you store data on the cloud, it almost always stores multiple copies in multiple places. This is the safest configuration for storage, in fact, many businesses use the cloud as backup storage as well. Storage on the cloud is generally cheaper than on-site storage, because the company that offers the storage will set up a single storage center, with a single maintenance staff, and then rent it out to multiple companies, rather than each company setting up their own space.

Accounting services

There are numerous companies on the web that will be happy to become your accounting department. All that you have to provide is one or two people to input the data, and everything else is taken care of. Their software and staff will complete the accounting work, and then all of the records will be stored and backed up on the cloud for you to access whenever you need them. Like the storage space, this is often much cheaper than running an in-house accounting department, because the cloud company already has everything set up and can charge much less than it would cost you.

HR services

This service is similar to the accounting services. You can hire a cloud company to take care of your HR services. You can put all of your forms, from the application to the W-2, online. Applicants will go through the cloud company, and once they are hired, their files will be stored on the cloud, by the provider. These companies can take care of wages, benefits, and anything else you need, and they’re also generally less expensive than what it would cost you to do it yourself.

Collaboration

One of the greatest things about the cloud is the ability to collaborate. For example, perhaps one of your sales people has a question about a client on the other side of the country. Instead of trying to communicate with a sales person who is far away to find the correct client and compare separate notes, they can both pull up the company-wide version of the client’s file and discus, using the cloud. Or maybe the management staff is holding a quarterly meeting. Instead of spending tens of thousands of dollars to fly them and all of their important documents to the same place, they can simply meet from the comfort of their own offices, through the cloud.

Online sales and inventory management

Online sales is a great channel to boost income, but it wouldn’t be possible without the cloud. Inventory management is a software that often comes with online sales that tracks inventory and forecasts sales and reorder dates. It also functions best on the cloud, especially if it’s tracking inventories in multiple warehouses across the country.

The cloud is an amazing thing. If you’d like to know more about what cloud can do for your company, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We’re experts and will be happy to help you with anything that you need.

Going Digital? Get the Best IT Support Los Angeles In The Industry

January 15, 2016 by eric

Many companies set out to position themselves as the leading providers of IT support Los Angeles, but somewhere along the way they lose sight of the meaning of excellent customer service. The larger a firm gets, the easier it is for its employees to lose touch with the initial service focus of the founders. We’re proud to say that we have experienced considerable growth in the last few years without losing touch with our commitment to our customers. We value the relationships we build with all of our clients in the LA metropolitan area.

Since the big success of newcomers like Uber, many companies are overhauling their model to reflect the trend towards customer-driven services. The name of the game is on demand. Among the many things we do, GeekTek offers two newer business models: our software-as-a-service (i.e. Google Apps for Business) and our knowledge-as-a-service (IT support). We are in a digital knowledge-based economy, and we are always improving how we deliver software and other services to meet your needs. and what it implies for our industry.

What the Research Shows

A recent post on the Harvard Business Review blog shows exactly how packaging a service is changing how everyone is doing business differently to compete in the Internet-of-Things (IOT). Writers Joe Sinfield, Ned Calder, and Ben Geheb note how corporations like John Deere have migrated to new business models, such as marketing digital subscription services to farmers and operators of their heavy equipment. These authors noted three major shifts among old-line industries now introducing smart-connected products to compete in the digital market.

1. a shift from selling equipment to selling outcomes,
2. a shift from creating solutions that transcend the notions of products and services, and
3. a shift from value chains to value networks.

Think Digital

Regardless of your industry, at some point your company must dare to think digital. This could be brainstorming ways to sell a digital subscription, adding smart-connected components to your products, or creating an app so that customers can use your service anywhere or with greater ease. Consider how you can revisit your business model and perhaps provide products or services to customers. Brainstorm the types of digital business models you might create to keep customers happy and outpace the competition.

Study the Competition

It is quite possible that a quick survey of your major competitors reveals how they are already going digital. In the age when everyone can drive for Uber and thousands of apps hit the market every day, your company cannot afford to stay stuck in the twentieth century. One of the biggest cautions that companies in your situation need is not to invest heavily in IT projects without first doing your research. For every idea you have to revolutionize how you deliver your value proposition, there could already be a competitor who has done it. Be sure what is out there and what is not. Then, decide how you can quickly shift resources or invest in new ones to go digital.

What We Can Do To Help

If you are considering moving to a digital business model and want to build the platform to deliver it or you just want increased IT support for platform-based operations, we’re here to help. We have cloud computing, managed IT services, and a team of IT consultants ready to tackle the next phase of your business growth.

Pick Our Brains

If your organization is like most in this fast-paced digital world, you don’t have enough in-house IT professionals to keep pace with the demands of customers. Typically, you must outsource some IT services and augment your IT staff throughout the year according to changing business conditions. We encourage you to find the best IT support provider in Los Angeles that gives you the highest level of service for the money. For more information, please contact us. Let’s discuss how you are going to go digital today.

Why Cloud Computing Is Popular Among Los Angeles Businesses

December 19, 2015 by eric

Cloud computing can seem complex because the name really gives no clue as to what it is about. This initially caused slower adoption, but now that it’s getting easier to find out the details, more and more companies are picking it up. Here is some information about the practice and why it’s beneficial for businesses to use it:

What is Cloud Computing?

Basically, it’s a system that moves software out of the customer’s location and puts it on remote computers. These remote systems are owned and operated by a variety of companies. The end result is that software and services that once were purchased on a one-time basis have become subscription-based.

Why Subscribe to Software?

When people first learn about this, they often balk at the idea of paying for software on an ongoing basis. However, once all of the costs of the former ownership model are added up, it can turn out to be cheaper to use the cloud. This is because the cost of software ownership goes beyond the initial price of the software itself. Hardware upgrades may be required to run the program, software upgrades often cost money, IT personnel are needed for software of advanced complexity, and peripheral software – such as plugins – may be needed to get the most out of the purchased program.

Other Benefits of Using the Cloud

The most obvious benefit of moving to cloud computing in Los Angeles is lower costs. There’s no need to worry about upgrading hardware to meet the ever-expanding needs of modern software. Your company also won’t have to pay the full cost of expensive licenses up front. With enterprise-level software, this can amount to thousands of dollars’ worth of savings for each program.

An equally important benefit is that there is no need to worry about the overall process of upgrading. With cloud computing, the service provider will do it all from their side – automatically. There’ll be no need to worry about downtime, transferring data, or other upgrade-related hassles. Established software companies will take care of everything seamlessly, and in most cases, the most you’ll have to deal with is a pop-up that informs you that you are now running the new version.

Cloud computing can also provide better security than the average business has on its own. Big software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies patch vulnerabilities as soon as they’re detected. They also have the latest security suites and teams of professionals dedicated to keeping everything safe. When your company signs on, it gains the benefit of all of this expertise and corporate power for a relatively small price.

Finally, cloud computing is very scalable. You’ll never have to worry about outgrowing it because expanding is as simple as upgrading your subscription. There’ll be no need to buy new hardware in order to keep up. This also works in reverse – if you have a seasonal downturn, you won’t have to pay for unused capacity.

Which Cloud Computing Services Should We Get?

This is a question that is discussed at many companies that are considering switching to this new way of doing things. There is no set answer. Each business has to consider its own needs and choose the solutions that best fill them. In this regard, cloud services are no different from old-fashioned purchased ones.

One of the best ways to arrive at a quick and accurate answer is to contact us here at GeekTek and set up a consultation. We keep tabs on all of the current offerings and can match your company with the right ones. We also watch the directions various cloud computing services are taking, so we can point out which ones are likely to be able to evolve along with your business. Our consultation service will save you plenty of time and let you proceed in an efficient and sure-footed manner.

Image Credit To: Cristóbal Alvarado Minic, Ron Reiring and Eino Mustonen