SMART Blog

Think about all the things you’ve experienced thanks to the rapid innovation of technology. We can all agree that technology is cool. Today, we have $10 drones, mugs that keep your coffee warm, and LEDs everywhere. 

So what’s next? 

With the blockchain growing more popular as a technology, we thought it would be good to discuss how it works and why you should be aware of it. The zeitgeist often portrays it as a nefarious tool used by cryptocurrency and scams, but at its core, it is far from this; in fact, the applications of such a decentralized and transparent technology make it ideal for certain tasks. Let’s explore them.

It’s always exciting when you can expand your business’ influence with a new location, but this excitement brings with it all kinds of complications. There’s always something, whether it’s the technology for the new location or the logistics surrounding the opening. Let’s look at how you can make sure that technology is not the thing that holds your business back from opening a new location.

Businesses will often go into the process of self-improvement with unrealistic expectations for how much they can significantly improve their functionality. This simply is not true, and sometimes business owners need to realize that real change—the kind that yields real results—takes time. Thankfully, there are some actionable steps you can take to ensure that your business is moving in the right direction.

Video conferencing has really taken off in recent years, due in no small part to the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced remote work on most businesses worldwide. However, businesses see the benefits of video conferencing, and it has now cemented itself as a go-to communications solution for all businesses. Today, we want to discuss how to make virtual meetings and video conferencing more productive and more engaging.

From smartphones to laptops and everything in between, our devices are constantly exposed to dirt, dust, and germs. Keeping your technology clean ensures a longer lifespan for your devices and promotes a user’s health. Today, we'll explore four practical tips to help you keep your technology clean and functioning at its best.

PDF, which stands for Portable Document Format, is a type of file that business professionals are all too familiar with. While most are aware of and appreciative of this file type, they likely are not aware of some of the more fun and useful features afforded to them. Let’s explore just what PDFs are capable of, including how to make and edit them.

Do you have employees who struggle with their technology? Chances are that there will always be individuals who are not as proficient with it as you might expect, and without a dedicated IT resource to ask for assistance, they might get frustrated and disengage with their work. You need to provide the right support to your employees, and you’re in luck; we have just the right solution to your problems: a help desk!

Are you paying attention to where you spend your IT dollars and whether or not you are making the most of your budget? It’s important to assess your needs before making any major technological purchase, including the goals, challenges, and pain points you are trying to solve. With the right approach, you can increase the value you get out of your IT—particularly with the following strategies.

In business technology, automation reigns supreme, especially for tedious tasks that offer little to the individual performing them. Remote management epitomizes such tasks, and strategic automation can greatly enhance organizational productivity. Let’s examine how automation can help you stay proactive. 

Small businesses are presented with the challenging prospect of monitoring and policing various IT-related policies that you might have for your network infrastructure and workplace technology use. The difficulty of this notion does little to lessen its importance, however. You need to take action to protect your assets, data, and reputation from the countless threats out there, and ensuring that your employees are properly using technology is paramount to this endeavor.

It isn’t easy to be a member of the workforce right now. While we won’t cover them in detail, plenty of stressors—related to and separate from the workplace—can easily impact an employee’s performance. As a result, it is often in your company’s best interest to invest in your team’s well-being, and one way to do this is by implementing and encouraging the use of different technologies.

There are many parts of running a business where you cannot be too careful, one of which is the realm of cybersecurity. Many of the preventative measures you can implement aim to keep issues from making their way to your infrastructure in the first place, which makes sense from an operational standpoint. With an endpoint detection and response solution—or EDR—you’ll take an important step toward keeping most threats off your infrastructure.

Ensuring that your organization's file-sharing policies and procedures are built to enhance security can significantly impact collaboration, distinguishing between efficient, streamlined processes and time-purging, wasteful practices. Navigating this terrain can be a challenge. Let’s explore several best practices your organization can adopt to optimize file-sharing.

Business file sharing has become a daily routine. It's a crucial part of collaboration, communication, and overall productivity. However, with the rise of cyberthreats, file security is more important than ever. It's not just about sharing files but doing it securely and efficiently. Today, we'll look at some best practices for business file sharing.

Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, is a technology that enables phone calls over the Internet. It offers a modern alternative to traditional phone lines with various advantages, like cost savings and advanced features. VoIP is revolutionizing business communication and is an essential tool for today's organizations, particularly with the rise of remote work. Here's why it's so popular among modern businesses.

Technology is an essential part of most business operations nowadays, regardless of the size of the business… and how that size may change over time. As such, it is essential that the infrastructure that supports this IT can adapt to these swells and declines.

Let’s discuss why it is so important that your IT infrastructure fits your business and a few best practices for tailoring it.

Software fuels most businesses nowadays, even the small shops down the street. Depending on the size and scope of the business, however, managing software can be complex and downright unfun. Today, we want to highlight a type of tool that your business can find great value in: a software management solution.

A business experiencing a network bottleneck is having a bad day, especially since the ability to share data is so important to many industries today. That said, today’s resource-intensive technologies can easily eat through an organization’s bandwidth and create these kinds of network slowdowns.

Let’s talk about what can be done to reduce these bottlenecks, if not eliminate them outright.

Telephone systems are a crucial part of any business. Voice over IP, or VoIP, takes telephone systems one step further by making the service more accessible, flexible, and affordable for SMBs. Today, we want to highlight some of the benefits you can expect from using a VoIP system.