PICS ITech

As I traveled to Chicago this weekend, I was reminded of all the possible disasters that winter brings to business. Ice and storms bring about the strong possibility that power lines, telephone and fiber interruptions will affect your business. We see it all too often where the winter weather knocks out businesses for hours or even days. Here are some things you can do to lessen the risk to your business in the winter.

1. Make sure your equipment is protected by a UPS. A UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) has internal batteries and a very quick switch to provide continuous power to the equipment even if the power is lost due to a storm. Of course, the UPS can only provide power for a while, typically a few minutes, but that is often enough to ride out a power company glitch or short outages. Even if the outage is longer than the battery time of the UPS, this provides the opportunity to execute an orderly shutdown of the equipment. Don’t forget other essential equipment like your phone system and alarm.

used with permission from the Microsoft Small Business website

Companies today have too much information. What companies don't have enough of is intelligence - and no, we're not talking about your staff. Business intelligence refers to the insights you discover when you turn all that data into something that your employees can use to make smart business decisions.

Business leaders and managers at all levels are bombarded with data from accounting systems, CRM, ERP and other business applications. Much of this information comes in the form of reports, which can be difficult to read and understand, or charts, which often lack necessary background detail.

used with permission from the Cisco Small Business Center

Easy IT Strategies that Save Money and Help the Environment

Smart information technology (IT) practices can reduce the environmental impact of conducting business, and help small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) reduce expenses.

With employee awareness and participation, even the busiest SMB can adopt simple "green" strategies that require little to no additional equipment or labor expenditures. Consider these enviro-friendly IT strategies:

Turn It Off
Reducing electricity consumption can help your business save money and the environment. U.S. computers used nearly 64 billion kilowatt hours of energy in 2005, costing over $6 billion, according to GreenIT, a consultancy focused on sustainable solutions for IT systems. Some solutions:

by Chris Geiser - PC Solutions - This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

In the last 5 years PCS has evolved from an IT consultancy to an IT support organization, relying on our people, processes, and controls to achieve our performance objectives. Our focus on service level improvements has, at times, been revealing about how IT personnel prefer to function. Today, I wanted to share a little bit of what we have been learning in the hopes that it can help you continue to improve the usefulness and efficiency of your IT systems.

by Marlene Chism

Instead of trying to lose twenty pounds for your New Year’s resolution, what if you decided to give up eleven habits that keep you stuck in your relationships at home and at work. Here are eleven things, in the form of mindsets, habits and behaviors to give up in 2011.

1. Give up the need to control
Impatience, complaining, and manipulation are ways we try to change something that can’t be changed. You can't control the weather, the crowds at the grocery store or traffic. All you can do is prepare, shop at a different time or leave early. In your workplace, ask yourself where you need to let go of control, where you can delegate and how you can learn instead to trust your co-workers.