Macro Systems Blog

Business is filled with all types of relationships, and some of them are very challenging. Consider for a minute how challenging some of the interactions you have with customers are; or some of the vendor conversations that happen; or some of the give-and-take you get from your employees. Sometimes it is hard to believe that without these people, your business would be a complete flop. Listed below is a break down of how sometimes the relationships you forge in business are the key to things breaking your business’ way.

We recently started to explore the concept of procrastination as a means of understanding it better, and potentially, getting better at not doing it. Last time, we touched on a few ways that procrastination can potentially manifest, so it only made sense to us that we would continue pulling that thread and try to help you identify how you tend to procrastinate more specifically.

You’re probably familiar with the concept of a mission statement, particularly in terms of your business as a whole. However, did you know that you don’t need to stop there? You can—and we’d argue, should—establish more specific organizational missions for your different departments. Consider how you can benefit from creating a mission for your IT team to uphold throughout its operations, and how you might go about doing so.

When your technology gets older it has a tendency to become less effective. This can be a major roadblock to organizational productivity and have devastating effects on your business. These include major downtime events and overwhelming inefficiency. Listed below is a look at some ways that you know that it’s time to focus on reinvestment. 

“Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today.” It’s good advice, as well as some of the easiest and most tempting advice to ignore. Procrastination is one of those things that we all assume we understand, but we wanted to take a bit of time to explore it in greater detail…and figure out how we can all work to resist it.

We tend to focus most of our attention on how to maintain your organization's technology over time. This only makes sense—we are a managed service provider, after all—but that being said, your IT is not the only element that needs to be properly taken care of. It is just as imperative that you and your team members are physically able to focus on work…something a desk job doesn’t always help.

Google continues to build its Workspace platform up with new and innovative tools that can help businesses be more successful and efficient. One such tool is a new solution being offered to select businesses using work or school platforms of Google Workspace: custom building blocks.

Compliance is an imperative element of many businesses’ requirements, with severe penalties as a consequence if the prescribed standards are not met. Even more critically, most compliance requirements and regulations are put in place for the welfare of not only the business, but its clientele as well. This makes it important to know which apply to your business, and how to meet them fully.

Information technology is a constantly changing industry, with practices shifting all the time. As a result, anyone you have working on your company’s IT should be actively seeking out various certifications to confirm that they are keeping up to date on modern trends and standards. To help you accomplish this, we’ve put together a brief list of valuable IT certifications that your IT personnel—whether they’re in-house employees or outsourced professionals—should have.

While it is imperative that your business implement comprehensive network protections, there are plenty of simple ways that your business’ cybersecurity could potentially fail. This could easily cost you heavily in your available capital, financial and social alike.

Thanks to the explosion of mobile phones, the world is connected like never before and most people seem to have a good grip on how to talk to each other using proper telephone etiquette. Therefore, when someone breaks socially accepted phone etiquette practices, they make themselves or the business they represent look bad.

Every year we take a look at the most interesting new smartphones that are being released. Over the past few years, fewer companies are making smartphones and throughout the whole industry, innovation has seemed to slow. Whether this is a result of rigid market dynamics, supply shortages, or the extraordinary costs it takes to manufacture and source components, it has taken some of the largest technology companies in the world, such as Amazon, LG, and HTC, out of the market and presented limited opportunities for other global technology leaders such as Microsoft, Sony, and Nokia. 

The smartphone is one of the best inventions of the 21st century; you can tell that by their adoption rates. These devices have completely changed the way people communicate, recreate, and work. They are so new that it’s funny to think that maybe in the very near future, these devices will be nothing more than trash in the world’s landfills. That being said, what comes after the smartphone?

A business’ operations are heavily influenced by the quality of its communications. On the other hand, the overwhelming number of options that are available today can make it challenging to decide how to invest in your technologies. How can you identify which of your options are right for your business needs when the time comes to upgrade your communications? 

Having data redundancy may sound like a bad thing. After all, redundancy is usually viewed as a reason for inefficiency. In the case of having your data and computing environments backed up, you are trying to build redundancy. Listed below is a look at some situations that a business can run into should they neglect to have a proper backup.

In good times and bad, profitability is the priority for most businesses. However, this priority is usually a challenging one to achieve, but did you know that there are a few different ways that investing in a relationship with a managed service provider can help increase your productivity—and as a result, your overall profitability?

AI, also known as artificial intelligence, has been a trending topic lately, with it seemingly being used for any purpose you can imagine nowadays. Alas, this has also included cybercrime.

That being said, just as AI can be a weapon for cybercriminals to utilize, it can also be a shield to help protect your business from threats. For instance, in phishing prevention.

Every office has that one employee that doesn’t seem to care that they are working in a room with other people. You know the type: They have day-old food on their desk, there are papers and other unnecessary items strewn about the desktop, things are sticky and smell strange. The funny part is they seem comfortable with that mess. Listed below are the benefits of keeping your workspace clean.

When it comes to security, one often overlooked tool is the virtual private network, or VPN. We recommend that all businesses utilize a VPN to keep remote and hybrid workers from inadvertently putting your business’ data at risk while out of the office. Listed below: why a VPN is so effective, as well as what you should look for in a business-grade VPN tool.

We’ve talked about what productivity is, how it can be measured, and how to protect it from what could impact it negatively. To bring this brief series to a close, let’s talk about what you can do to maximize it as much as possible for your business’ benefit.