BTS Technologies Newsletter October 2020

Technical Excellence

At BTS, one of our core values is Solve the Customer's Problem, and we do that through our technical expertise. Some people have a natural affinity for tech and problem solving, but everyone benefits from continued education and additional training. At BTS we focus on education for every level of our organization, utilizing our experience to push your business forward.

It is Cyber Security Awareness Month, so let's harp on that for a moment. Your security is our number one priority, and to that end we work with our vendors, partner organizations, and other professional groups to stay on top of the most pressing issues.

Recently four of our technicians worked with our firewall partner Watchguard to recertify and learn about current and looming threats to business technology. Here is a hint: Internet of Things and Remote Workforce are changing the threat landscape dramatically. Our technical advisors and management team are attending webinars and certification programs later this month to further their understanding of cybersecurity issues.

With less fanfare, but no less time and effort, two technicians recently completed continuing education credits on physical security to better service our CCTV customers.

Other past and upcoming training/CEs include:

• Business Process Improvement with TAG
• EOS Recharge Conference
• Healthcare Fraud Summit
• Cyber Security Summit
• Ongoing Infragard training

And many more little things that we learn every day in our continued efforts to provide the best service to you.

Too much to keep up with?
Security – Internet – @Home Workers!!

Office and Technology Managers are working overtime to solve basic problems of staying in business and connected safely. Staff is either at home or mobile, and it will likely be that way to stay. The struggle to keep the company's data safe is ongoing, along with making sure workers can communicate. While this sounds like an exponential problem, there are easy solutions that can make your office life like it used to be.

How about working @Home? Take a "connected" office phone home and plug it in and keep working.

How about Security? Files and applications safely tucked away in the cloud with access from anywhere (beach, mountains, home, office). Wouldn't you like to sleep easy knowing you and your team are protected anywhere?

How about Presence? Knowing what everyone is doing at any moment of the day (office, @home, or mobile). Integrated solutions to keep everyone informed.

Connectivity – internet working "some" of the time? Would you rather die than to wait on hold for an hour with the carrier help desk overseas??? Connectivity, the right way, is the key.

Ticket to Freedom

Get your Ticket to Freedom! Call BTS to rant about your situation and ask how we can help. No agenda – just educated answers from experienced professionals. You may even qualify for a no-cost network analysis.

Business Sounding Board

Do you need someone to bounce ideas off, or muse over possible solutions to a problem? Sometimes an outside perspective is all you need to see the answer. Whatever problem you are facing in your business, we will be your sounding board. Click on THIS LINK to schedule a time to chat with William Wentowski. Let's see if we can tackle that idea bouncing around in your head together!

Stop Multitasking!

Everyone involved in healthcare is familiar with HIPAA and the fines associated with leaked information. For those that aren't, a compromised record can catch you a fine of $100 to $50,000. The more negligent/frequent an offender you are, the higher the fine. Why is this important to our story? I manage our Zoom calls for our hybrid Rotary meetings every Monday (I'd love for you to attend one). We have about 20 people socially distanced in person and anywhere from 25 to 75 people on the Zoom call, depending on our speaker.

This last week, one of our members with a private medical practice had joined us via Zoom and decided to review patient records while on the call. How do we know he was reviewing patient records? He showed us. Three times. He accidentally shared his screen with 65 people three times during the meeting, long enough to see 12 patient records. Additionally, these meetings are recorded, so we will need to edit those parts of the meeting out before we can share it with fellow members. If we had a regulator in the group, it would have been a huge furball for him.

It was bad.

It shouldn't have happened.

It could have been disastrous with a different audience.

I beg of you stop multitasking, even more so during meetings. It hasn't happened to you, but everyone slips up and shares something they didn't intend to with consequences ranging from embarrassment to outright sinking a business. Additionally, multitasking is killing you and your career. There are numerous studies that demonstrate how bad it is for you and how to overcome it.

Our current remote work environments make us feel like we must do even more. Increase productivity and availability to all hours of the day, but it takes a very real mental toll. Increasing stress leads to poor decision making (bad for business), and poor decision making leads to cybersecurity breaches (incredibly bad for business). Stop multitasking and start focusing. It could very well save your business.

BizOps: Getting the Most for Your IT Dollar

BizOps is the alignment of IT and business operations, a data-driven approach connecting IT to departments with more direct business functions like marketing and finance. The hard angle is to use AI and software development practices to greatly improve the effectiveness and outcomes of other business units. This can be a tall task for the largest of companies and a virtual impossibility for organizations sub 500 employees. Is there a way for your business to leverage IT to its fullest?

Per a Harvard Business Review paper on BizOps, they found "Nearly half of respondents said the growing complexity of IT environments has created a sense of "chaos" in their organizations." Most organizations already struggle with their IT; or at a minimum have a partner that keeps it all from burning to the ground. Neither of these states is going to allow your organization to grow. Worse, over time, your company is likely to shrink without BizOps.

"Now the ante has increased significantly because every company is, or will be, a technology and analytics company."

It seems preposterous now, but so was the car replacing the horse and every home using lightbulbs rather than gas/lamplight. Computers use to take up entire floors of office buildings, and now we have smartphones with hours of battery life and with 120,000,000 times the processing power of the Apollo 11 guidance computer (and that's the old iPhone 6). It is perfectly reasonable then that SMBs with an eye towards the future should squeeze every ounce of value out of their IT spend to provide a competitive advantage.

First, stop seeing IT spend as solely a cost. "Managing technology as a cost center – where the emphasis is on doing more with less, maximizing efficiencies of scale, and then shrinking their budgets by 3% every year – shackles the organization." While it is Business 101 that the easiest way to improve the bottom line is controlling costs, what is your organization giving up by strangling IT to the bottom dollar? The answer is any hope at gaining or maintaining a long-term competitive edge. We cannot blow the budget, one must always be cost-conscious, but we must not seek the lowest dollar (and lowest value) option.

Second, you must work with IT to focus on outcomes you can measure. Wildly successful businesses already know that outcomes and goals are what you need to define a winning process for every part of the business. Outcomes write job descriptions and put the right people in the right seat.

"Most executives also agree that by being able to better see the business outcomes of their work, IT can make better decisions, focus on more strategic efforts, and have higher levels of productivity."

As mentioned previously, BizOps is mostly aimed at large organizations within internal IT teams. You require a partner that can bring everything from the above quote to your organization. Our partners who experience rapid growth utilize BTS to provide the BizOps that their organization cannot staff, let alone afford, on their own. There is no turnkey solution to this and must be tailored to every company. Let's start the conversation now and see if your business is in a place to benefit from BizOps.

Contact us!

Service: 205-290-8300 or service@askbts.com

*Please CALL if it is after hours or if you are experiencing an emergency, system outage or another critical issue*

Operator: 205-942-6532

Toll Free: 800-255-4372

311 West Valley Ave| Birmingham, AL 35209|(205) 290-8400|contact@askbts.com

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