Getting dazed and confused with all of the options for chatting, texting, tweeting, posting, liking and poking people at work nowadays? Fear not, Unified Communications can help you and your business manage and make sense of all of these different communication forms. Read on to find out more.

Because of continued improvements in technology and changes in the way people work, we now have a multitude of options to communicate with one another. This can be both a boon and a curse, as not only do we have to learn and master a variety of devices from which to communicate—but also contend with an equal or higher number of forms with which to communicate. For example, not only do we make a phone call to talk nowadays, but we also chat, text, tweet, post, like, poke, huddle, share screens, do white board sessions, and more. We can do all of these whether on the desktop computer, laptop, netbook, tablet, desk phone, mobile phone, TV – and soon maybe even from the kitchen refrigerator! Not surprisingly, people have started looking for ways to tame and simplify all of this complexity—and thus was born the concept of "Unified Communications."

Unified Communications, simply stated, encompasses the organization of different communication tools and models so that it can be used and managed in an integrated way, with the goal of improving flexibility, efficiency, and effectiveness. To illustrate the benefits of Unified Communications, here are some examples of how it can be used in several business scenarios:

1. Have a "single number to call" or a simpler way of reaching people. Instead of remembering and sharing a phone number, IM handle, email address, twitter account, and more, you can have just one number or address by which people can reach you—and systems will bridge that with whatever device or application your Unified Communications happen to be on or you prefer. So you can easily have calls placed to your desk phone routed to your mobile phone when you are out, and have voice mail emailed to you as a recording in case you can't answer.
2. Reaching people when you need them. If you are working remotely, or managing remote workers, Unified Communications systems can indicate your or your colleagues' location or "presence"—i.e., whether you or they are available at the normal location, working remotely, or out in the field.
3. Synchronous or asynchronous way of working. If you work with people in different time zones you can opt to conference when your schedules overlap, or swap messages that can be answered at their convenience if they don't —and be able to track and tie all of these together.
4. Richer collaboration. If you work on projects, Unified Communications can allow you or your team to get in touch and collaborate in a richer and more interactive way. While working on a project you can chat, switch to voice calls for better clarity, or conference via video to provide more context, as well as share screens for easier collaboration—all from a single screen or session.
5. Application integration. Imagine if you had the ability to call people from your email application's address book, or initiate a web conference from your instant messaging tool. With Unified Communications that is all possible.

Unified Communications may sound expensive and complex, but in reality it can actually lessen costs and make things simpler for you and your business. Learn more about Unified Communications and what else it can do to improve your business by contacting us today.

So you’ve bought into the whole social media and online marketing idea and you’re Tweeting, posting to Facebook, LinkedIn, blogging and using Google+ (not to mention dozens of other online tools and resources) to promote your company. Whew!

However, here’s the little “gotcha” to all of this that you might not have thought about: how do you manage all of this? And how can you keep an eye on these various web sites to make sure you’re not missing a customer service issue, negative post or even a sales opportunity? The answer is Hootsuite.

Hootsuite is an online aggregation tool that allows you to review and manage all your online postings and presence through a simple, easy to use interface. All in one place, you can manage your company’s Twitter accounts, your personal Facebook account, your company Facebook fanpage, your LinkedIn posts, your WordPress blog entries and even more. You can even assign rights to any of your accounts to other team members without ever giving up a single password.

Other helpful features of HootSuite include:
Monitor social mentions of your name
or company wherever they happen
Pre-schedule posting to happen any time in the future.
Easily post your message across multiple social media sites with the simple click of a button in your HootSuite portal.
Create custom reports to see where your traffic goes and what is working

Thinking of adopting a "bring your own device", or BYOD, policy at work? Learn more about what it is, why it's becoming popular – and what you need to consider before rolling it out.

You may have noticed more and more of your employees or colleagues bringing their own computing devices to work—be it their mobile phone, tablet, or laptop. Or perhaps in your company or in other companies you may have seen, they have let people decide which device they prefer because they are used to it at home. You may not realize it, but this is all part of a large trend called the "consumerization" of IT, in which the influence of consumer technology is being increasingly felt in the workplace. With the wide availability of cheap but powerful mobile devices and online services, a growing number of people are being exposed to the latest technology at home first—adopting them at a rate faster than most businesses are able to manage. This flips on its head the old paradigm in which traditionally new technologies would be rolled out to businesses first, before they would find their way to consumers.

This trend, plus the increasing sophistication of young workers today and their frustration with the tools available to them at the office, is pushing some companies to adopt a "bring your own device" or BYOD policy at work. They are not alone. According to research by technology analyst group Gartner, end users, not the IT department, will soon be responsible for 50 percent of business IT procurement decisions—ultimately bringing and running their own systems on company networks. Meanwhile, according to management consultants Accenture, around one-third of today's younger generation of workers (a group called "millenials") not only wants to use the computer of their choice at work, but also wants control of the applications they use too.

The benefits companies cite to adopting a BYOD policy are many, among them:

• Savings on capital expenses and training costs in using company equipment—compensating employees instead via other means such as flexible work hours, subsidized purchases, insurance, and other benefits.
• Less management headache—effectively letting employees decide what to use releases the company from some overhead and management responsibilities.
• Improved employee satisfaction—by giving employees the freedom to use devices and applications that they prefer.

However, before you consider letting employees bring their own personal technology to the work place, be aware that there are also disadvantages, and sometimes very real dangers in doing so. These include:

• Non-standardization of hardware, operating systems, and applications. If your business operations require that some equipment is integrated with others, then BYOD can in the long run actually increase IT management costs and decrease efficiency.
• Exposing your network to malware or security vulnerabilities and breaches. When your employees bring their own devices to work, you lose important control over their security. Consumer devices often don't employ comparable bullet-proof security technologies mandated by businesses.
• Leakage of confidential or proprietary information. Employees will naturally do what they want with the data on their devices, even if it doesn't belong to them, or it's against company policies. Employees can also lose precious company data when they misplace or damage their personal devices.
• Lower economies of scale in procurement. Essentially because everyone is buying devices on their own, you miss out on the chance to consolidate purchases and lower purchase costs for everybody.

Have you adopted a BYOD policy at work? Thinking about it? Worried about this trend? If you need to understand BYOD better so you can define a policy for your staff, contact us and see how we can help.

With today's advancements in technology, and the constant lowering of prices as technology achieves mass adoption, VoIP is now within easy reach for most businesses—even small businesses. Read on to find out why you should consider switching to VoIP for your phone and office communication systems today.

If you are running a business, then there is no reason you shouldn't be using Voice-over-IP, or VoIP, to reduce telecommunications cost, streamline operations, and improve the flexibility for your organization today.

VoIP, simply put, allows telephone communications to run over your data network or the Internet. The benefits of this setup are many, and the following are just a few.

1. VoIP allows companies to maximize investments already made in their network infrastructure. The same network which handles the flow of data such as web access and email can now accommodate voice as well—no need to add and maintain additional wires and devices.
2. VoIP can allow you to dramatically reduce the cost of communications, especially for interstate or international communications—everything can go through the Internet instead of incurring expensive long distance toll charges.
3. VoIP allows your employees to be more productive and efficient by giving them the ability to receive and make calls anywhere with a data connection, using their laptop, mobile phone, tablet, or virtually any device connected to the Internet.
4. VoIP increases the number of features you can use with your phone system. For example, it's easier to add extensions to your phone. You can provide a local number or extension for all your staff without additional costs or cabling. You can also set up sophisticated auto answering routines and call routing. You can marry voice messages with email and faxes all in one inbox.
5. You can use VoIP as a tool for real-time collaboration—along with video conferencing and screen sharing. You can employ presence technologies that come standard with VoIP phones and VoIP communication systems. Communicate with colleagues about your presence or receive info on the status and whereabouts of your staff.

Previously, all these benefits were only available with a big price tag and a critical limitation—the unavailability or unreliability of the company's Internet connection—but not anymore. With the great strides made in technology and the wide availability and affordability of broadband connections over the last few years, VoIP is now readily within reach for many businesses—large or small

VoIP is certainly a technology that has come of age. It's cheap, ubiquitous, and easy-to-use, and any business should have VoIP in their toolset. If you are interested in learning more about how VoIP can help your business, contact us today to find out more!

Are you about to experience dam failure? Let me explain what I mean. As a CEO Coach, I have conversations with leaders of companies from a variety of industries, shapes and sizes. Yet one pattern that nearly all these business leaders share is that they say “yes” too often.

Think about your schedule like a reservoir with the dam. Every time you say yes to something, you’re adding more and more water to that reservoir. Say yes too often and pretty soon you’re going to have to open the spillway to let something else out. Keep this up for a while, and eventually you’ll experience dam failure.

To protect your reservoir of time, I’m going to give two tips that you can use to help you say “no” more often than you say “yes.”

The first deals with saying no to others. The more successful you become as a business owner or a CEO, the more people will be drawn to you. They’ll want you to be involved in their projects. That’s not to say that you should say no to all of them, but you need to be judicious in the “yeses.”

A simple way to handle this is to ask for requests through email. Email allows you to review their request in a calm environment, away from social pressure, and view it in relation to your calendar. Then, if you decide to say no, you can take your time to craft a diplomatic response.

The second tip deals with saying no to yourself. Most entrepreneurs, business owners, and CEOs are great idea generators. They have many ideas about business improvements or maybe even new business ventures. However, when they say yes to too many of those ideas, pretty soon they have to open the spillway of their time reservoir, causing them to neglect other things—or, even worse, experience dam failure.

I recommend using a perhaps list. A perhaps list is a running list of all those great ideas that you have. Put ideas on that list, and then set up a schedule—perhaps once per month—to review that list and decide whether it’s time to add something new to your already busy schedule. These two simple tips will help protect your precious time and focus. Follow them consistently, and you’ll go a long way toward avoiding dam failure.

 

For smaller companies and businesses who are constantly on the lookout for great free finds on the web: here are a few nifty and free online tools that might potentially help you, both in saving costs and boosting your productivity and efficiency.

It is a constant challenge for small businesses to meet ever-changing and ever-evolving IT requirements while balancing a budget and keeping costs reasonable. And with software applications being one of the major factors that contribute to IT maintenance costs, it is always welcome news to come across free tools that work well and efficiently despite the lack of a price tag.

ThinkFree Online Office One of these applications is ThinkFree Online Office, which is a cloud application that enables you to create and edit documents in common formats. It also comes with free 1GB of storage and allows you to work from anywhere, since the documents are stored online. And with its own app for Android users, ThinkFree is particularly advantageous to people who need to work on the go.

ReqMan Another free cloud-based application that can prove useful is ReqMan, an online project management tool. You can use this to manage and track your different projects using various templates the service provides. And since it's in the cloud, mobile personnel and staff who are given access to your ReqMan account can work even when they're out of the office.

Gliffy Gliffy is a free tool that you can use to create all sorts of technical illustrations – diagrams, floor plans, flowcharts, and more. The basic plan is free, but you also have the option to subscribe to their more fully featured plans for a minimal fee.

ScheduleOnce For managing schedules, calendars, and the like, ScheduleOnce allows you to keep better track of all your appointments, meetings, and deadlines through a single tool. It integrates with your calendar on Google, and then allows other people to see your open times when they can schedule a meeting with you. Think of it as a one-stop-shop for your scheduling needs.

If you want to know more about these tools and how you can best utilize them, please feel free to contact us. We’ll be happy to guide you and help you make the most out of these types of applications to improve your efficiency and bottom line.

Here’s a little quandary for you to consider: If you have employees using company-owned laptops, phone or other devices, who’s responsible for replacing them if they get lost, stolen or damaged? This is a sticky question and one that needs to be addressed BEFORE Joe walks into your office to sheepishly admit he’s left his laptop at Starbucks last night.

Under federal law, an employer has the right to deduct the costs of a lost or damaged device from their employee’s paycheck PROVIDED that deduction doesn’t drop the employee’s compensation below minimum wage. However, California considers the loss and damage of electronic devices to be a cost of doing business and will only allow you to charge back your employees if they were negligent. Other states may have similar laws – so the first thing you should do is check with an attorney who specializes in employment law for your state to know what you can and can’t do.

Next, decide what your policy is going to be on this topic and communicate that in writing to your employees. It should outline what care they should take with company-owned mobile devices as well as the consequences of losing or damaging them. Yes, the term “policy” makes us all cringe, but it’s important to make sure you and your employees have a written understanding of what your expectations are, as well as what their responsibility is.

A BIGGER Loss To Consider

The cost of replacing a lost device is actually insignificant compared to the bigger cost and risk of the data it contains. Of course this opens up another can of worms all employers need to think about – security on mobile devices. And since some employees are using their OWN devices, you’ll need to think through what the rules are for company owned AND employee owned devices. (Aside, putting your data in the cloud can help).

But one thing is for sure: if you and your employees are storing sensitive information like passwords, credit card information, client or patient data on mobile devices, extra care MUST be taken to ensure the security of that data if the device is stolen. As always, if you need help in determining what your policy should be and how to secure mobile devices, give us a call. This service is free to all Shoreline Total Care clients.

If you think “data backup” is synonymous with “disaster recovery” and aren’t sure what “business continuity” means, you’re not alone. Most of the business owners we talk to make the mistake of not knowing the difference and end up paying the price when data is lost, a network goes down or a disaster prevents them from accessing their physical office and the server inside.

First, data backup simply means a copy of your data is replicated to another device or location. Tape drives, offsite backup and even USB devices provide data backup.  Data backup is obviously important. However, the more important consideration is whether or not your backup solution provides easy disaster recovery, or the ability for you to recover all your files, software and functionality quickly, easily and without corruption.  For example, if your server died, you wouldn’t be able to quickly get back to work if you only had file-level backup. In order for you to start working again, your server would need to be replaced, all software re-installed, data re-installed and then the whole system would need to be configured with your settings and preferences. This process could take hours or even days – and that’s if you have all your software licenses and a clean copy of your data.

Then there’s business continuity. This is the ability for your business to continue to operate even after a major disaster. For example, if you ran an accounting firm and your building burned to the ground, you’d be out of business if all your files were on the server only. However, if you had your network in the cloud (see our first article) your employees could continue to work from home or some other location, giving your business continuity.

The big difference between Android and the iOS is the fact that, on an Android device, you can play Flash videos. There are times however when this seeming advantage can be a disadvantage as Flash (such as Flash ads) can slow down your browsing experience or even crash your browser. There is a solution.

You can turn off Flash if you choose to. Simply go to your Browser's Settings by pressing on the Menu/Options button, then go to Advanced and change 'Enable plug-ins' setting from "Always on" to "On demand." Flash applications will now appear as an arrow that you must touch to start.

There are times when you may want to capture what is currently being shown on your iPad's screen. That’s easy to do on an iPad.

Simply press the Home button and then the Sleep/Wake button simultaneously. When you hear a click, the screenshot has been taken. You can then go to the photos gallery to see all of your captured screenshots.