Now that the holidays are behind us it is time to get back to work and prepare for 2015. Below are a few items to check to help get your business started on the right foot.
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- While reviewing your expenses for 2014 take a look at your phone and Internet bills. Many times you can lower each by getting competitors’ pricing and presenting that to your existing vendor. If you have business owned mobile phones it may be the year to dump them and move towards using employee’s own phones with business management software.
- Find out if you (or any key employees) have been hacked. Visit haveibeenpwned.com and enter in your email address to find out. Which leads to…
- Change all your passwords for local administrator accounts, cloud services, and other key systems. At least 8 characters. Take the first letter of a memorable phrase and add some other items you will remember to it such as your childhood house #.
- Clean up old user and email accounts as well as old directories on the file server. Not only is it good for security and productivity it can also lower your expenses if you are paying for account or space based services such as online backup or Microsoft Office 365.
- Do you have a local email server or are you still using a POP account from GoDaddy? This is the year to move to the cloud to save yourself costs and get improve productivity. $4/user/month is a good budget number to plan with for a direct email cloud migration.
- Still using inkjet printers? Swap them out for laser printers for lower long term costs.
- Check your UPS (battery backup systems). Some have buttons to test them other have lights (red = bad) or digital displays.
- Count how many PCs are older than 4 years old. Ballpark $600/machine for replacement. They may work but they are probably so slow it is hurting employee productivity.
- Test restoring a file from your backup solution. Not using cloud based backups yet? You should be (we can help).
- …and of course contact Wireguided if you are not happy with your current IT service provider.
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-Tim
Esther Griswold
Bruce DelleChiaie
Andrew Hegarty
Lisa Wollaston
