SMART Blog

Smart Services has been providing independent agents with proactive, fast, and expert technology services since 1991.

How to Reposition Yourself for Remote Productivity (Literally!)

How to Reposition Yourself for Remote Productivity (Literally!)

As current events have made congregating in an office irresponsible and hazardous, many companies are sustaining their operations by enabling remote work. While we normally focus on how you should properly take care of your technology, we wanted to shift our focus momentarily to the people using this technology, and how they can do so more safely.

To do so, we have to consider ergonomics.

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Tip of the Week: How to Adapt to a Business Disaster

Tip of the Week: How to Adapt to a Business Disaster

“Stuff” happens. While this may not be the kind of thing you want to consider in terms of your business’ operations, it is something that must be done if you want to be prepared for the moment when all of that “stuff” hits the fan (as so many businesses are now learning firsthand). We wanted to share a few best practices and tips to help you stay positive during this, and other, serious crises.

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The Cloud Is Coming of Age

The Cloud Is Coming of Age

For the past decade, cloud computing has grown fairly rapidly, but as a new decade, and a pesky virus has people (and businesses) leaning on hosted computing solutions more now than ever, it seems like a good time to review the types of cloud options that are available, and how they provide value to businesses just like yours.

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The Importance of Secure Conferencing

The Importance of Secure Conferencing

Conferencing has been an important tool for businesses as stay-at-home orders have moved their operations out of the office and into worker’s homes. While there are dozens of video conferencing solutions on the market, businesses should consider security just as much as they consider functionality. Today, we’ll take a look at security for your company’s conferencing solutions.

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Tip of the Week: Monitor Your Hardware While Out of the Office

Tip of the Week: Monitor Your Hardware While Out of the Office

Businesses are just now starting to reopen as stay-at-home orders are lapsing or going to lapse. For many of those businesses, remote solutions have got them through this ordeal and for many others they continue to deploy a remote workforce. For companies still promoting telework, monitoring your local IT environment is something that you need a solution for. For this week’s tip, we’ll discuss some of the best practices you can use to monitor your IT while out of the office.

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Technologies that Small Businesses Should Be Using

Technologies that Small Businesses Should Be Using

As time passes and technology is developed, a lot of the processes that businesses rely on become more efficient and stand to deliver greater benefits to the organizations that use them. These benefits are accessible to businesses of all sizes, including small businesses. Let’s go over a few small business needs, and how technology can assist with them.

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VoIP Is a Complete Game Changer

VoIP Is a Complete Game Changer

Businesses of all types rely on their telephone systems. Today, there is an option that can revolutionize any business’ communications platform, and do so for a fraction of the cost of a traditional telephone system. Today, we’ll take a look at VoiP and why it’s such a good option for your business.

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Tip of the Week: Four Essential Network Management Practices

Tip of the Week: Four Essential Network Management Practices

Businesses depend on their networks to effectively complete the tasks they need to accomplish, making it critically important that the one you rely on is managed properly. Let’s go over a few tips and best practices that can help you ensure that it is.

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Three Ways the Cloud is a Cost-Effective Option for Businesses

Three Ways the Cloud is a Cost-Effective Option for Businesses

As technology has developed, the tools available for businesses to use have gained considerable benefits. One particularly paradigm-shifting advancement, the cloud, has allowed businesses access to better solutions than ever before, and with the bonus of making them easier to manage. Let’s go over a few such solutions that many businesses are now embracing.

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Two Tips for Managing Your Email in Outlook Better

Two Tips for Managing Your Email in Outlook Better

Email! We all know it. We all stare at it every day (or it stares down at us, depending on how you look at it). Microsoft Outlook has some neat features to help cut down on the time you spend managing your email. Let’s jump right into it.

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Tip of the Week: Three Ways Collaboration Can Be Improved

Tip of the Week: Three Ways Collaboration Can Be Improved

Collaboration is critical for a business’ success, but with more teams than ever split amongst their homes, it is arguably even more crucial to their operations. For this week’s tip, we’re going over three ways that your team can collaborate more effectively while making remote operations work.

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How to Make Video Conferencing Less Awkward for Everyone

How to Make Video Conferencing Less Awkward for Everyone

Right now, more business than ever is now conducted over video chat. You may have found yourself using it as a tool as you work remotely. However, while these conversations may help keep your team connected to one another, the experience certainly isn’t the same as what would be found in the office conference room. Here, we’re sharing a way to get rid of one of the biggest hurdles in remote collaboration.

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Business Continuity Planning is Your Greatest Tool

Business Continuity Planning is Your Greatest Tool

Disasters, at least in the business sense, have long been underestimated. While you always, always, hear about disasters that are often seen, there are some (as we are witnessing now) that can go under the radar until they strike. Regardless of the nature of the disaster, however, you need to be prepared to continue both your operations and your communications to some degree.

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Tip of the Week: Backup’s Value, in Two Scenarios

Tip of the Week: Backup’s Value, in Two Scenarios

Each week, we try to provide some tips to help you out in some way. This time, we want to take a somewhat different approach and instead present you with two potential scenarios that your business could encounter—one with and one without a backup solution in play—and let you see the benefit that our tip this week (protect your business with a backup solution) can present.

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Protecting Your Data Privacy Is Harder than Ever

Protecting Your Data Privacy Is Harder than Ever

If you consider it, it’s amazing how much trust people have in Internet-based companies. They not only believe that these companies will fulfill their expectations, but that they will work to provide protection for some of their most valuable and sensitive information. Let’s take a look at some of the data collection practices that companies use and what they do with that data. 

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Cybersecurity Takes Effort at 3 Levels

Cybersecurity Takes Effort at 3 Levels

The way people talk about cybersecurity, it’s as if it is something like a television or a new phone: something you can just buy. That’s not the truth. When you are seriously looking at how you can keep unwanted entities off your network, while having control over what you do with your technology, you need to look at it as three levels of security.

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Tip of the Week: How to Effectively Task Out Responsibilities

Tip of the Week: How to Effectively Task Out Responsibilities

With so many things that need to be accomplished each day, it always helps to have all the information needed to complete these tasks. If a task has no context assigned to it or no insight into how to approach it, productivity and morale are going to suffer. To prevent this, you need to properly task out your team’s goals. Here, we’ve provided some practices to help.

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How the Right Technology Can Help SMBs Reopen Safely

How the Right Technology Can Help SMBs Reopen Safely

Many small businesses in the United States—most, actually—are in a catch-22 of sorts due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While reopening too soon could contribute to a resurgence in infection rates, there is also a very real risk associated with reopening too late. To help avoid either scenario, the right technology solutions will prove to be indispensable.

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For the SMB Returning to Work

For the SMB Returning to Work

Many states’ stay-at-home orders that are/were designed to mitigate the spread of the COVID-19 virus are now lapsing all over the U.S. As a result, business owners are re-opening their doors to a great deal of uncertainty. We have put together this guide to help the business owner understand that, even though you’ve finally been given the go-ahead, you have a responsibility to keep your staff and customers safe.

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IT Training That Is Sure to Get the Desired Effect

IT Training That Is Sure to Get the Desired Effect

A business without well-trained employees is one that is always on the precipice of disaster. With the threat landscape the way it is, you need your staff to know how to properly maneuver around company IT and you need to ensure they know how to protect themselves and the company in a digital environment. Today, we will take a look at some strategies to promote end-to-end security at your company.

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