What's Your Plan?

As 2021 nears the end, what plans do you have for your business next year?

If you have ambitions for growth, you must have an IT strategy in place that will help you make the best of new technology to support your business goals.

Why create an IT strategy?

An IT strategy shouldn’t be a purely technical document. The best IT strategies can be shared widely across the business. Using input from all departments, a good IT strategy will improve how everything works and ensures that sufficient IT resources are planned for your whole business. A good strategy will guide how you invest in future technology as well as make sure the technology you currently use contributes to hitting your business goals. Not to mention it’ll also help reduce the risk of your team running into common (and easily avoidable to us) IT issues that can slow them down and cause frustration.

Can we help you create your IT strategy?

Click to Call or Email us today to schedule a meeting to discuss your company’s IT strategy.

Rethinking Modern Productivity

We all have our own ways of working.

Some people work with Post-it notes all over their desks while others prefer to keep everything digital. There’s no right or wrong way of doing things when it comes to productivity and we all have our preferences. If you’re looking for some alternative ways to be more productive, here’s a few apps that might help:

Toggl lets you easily track your day so you can see how much time you’re spending on different tasks. Whether you want to see which clients are consuming all your time, or how long you spend on video calls every day, Toggl makes it super quick and easy to keep an eye on where your time is going. Understanding where your time goes is the first step to making your time work for you.

Trello is a great tool for organizing your life. It lets you set up boards, lists, and cards that you can use pretty much however you want. It’s a very flexible tool. Trello’s great for work too, especially for teamwork and project management.

If you’re constantly bombarded with links to articles and websites that you don’t have the time to read immediately, Pocket is a great app that lets you quickly save and categorize any links that you want to come back to later. It’s available as a browser extension as well as a mobile app for iOS and Android.

If you need more ideas for productivity, please feel free to reach out to your account manager at Cyclone 365. If you’re not currently partnered with us, then click to Call or Email us today to schedule a meeting to discuss your company’s IT needs.

Ugh! 2021 Just Won't End

It’s hard to believe it’s still 2021. It’s been a trying year for many small to medium-sized businesses and it’s not even over yet. We need no reminding of what happened last year with COVID-19 shutdowns and this year with the semiconductor shortages and the implications that have followed. How’s your business been?

We’ve been seeing our IT partnerships strengthened working together with our clients. How has your IT support company or IT department performed over the last year or so? How did they support your shift to remote working? Have they been proactive throughout the year or just sitting around; waiting around for you to call them when something’s broken?

If you want to upgrade your IT support and form a proper partnership where both parties work to help each other grow, now is the time to make the switch.

Click to Call or Email us today to schedule a meeting to discuss your company’s IT needs.

Microsoft Office 365... Wait, what?

Did you realize that earlier last year, Office 365 was rebranded as Microsoft 365? Yeah, they were hard at work in the Microsoft marketing department again, much to everyone’s dismay. Most business owners don’t have time to keep up with their continual product changes. However, you’ll see that it’s not just Microsoft’s marketing team that’s been busy. Here’s a few interesting features that are part of Microsoft 365:

Money in Excel

Do you use spreadsheets to keep track of your finances? Money in Excel offers a convenient way to manage your money without needing to manually input your data. It offers a secure way to connect your bank accounts and credit cards to automatically import your transactions. No more copying and pasting or flicking between apps. Money in Excel is comes bundled with a range of other tools to help you track your spending habits, and work towards your financial goals.

Application guard

If you’ve got a decent IT partner, they’ll have told you about the risks of opening emailed files that can expose your network to malware attacks. With Application Guard for Office, any risky files will automatically open in a secure container that’s completely isolated from the rest of your data. A key difference in this new update is that you’re free to edit, print, and save the files without ever needing to take them out of the secure container. It’s a great first line of defense when dealing with documents sent over from other companies or vendors. One of the best features of working with Cyclone 365 is access to custom-designed, multi-layered security technologies.

Ideas in Excel

Ideas in Excel makes it easy to get insights about your data. You just need to highlight a selection and Excel will get back to you with interesting things it notices. It’ll even come back with pre-built tables, charts, or PivotTables that can easily be added to your document.

You can also go one step further and type a question for Excel about your data.

When you partner with Cyclone 365, you are instantly provided access to your very own Microsoft 365 suite as part of your annual Security or Service contract. We work hard to make sure our clients stay updated about new ways they can get more out of their software.

Click to Call or Email us today to schedule a meeting to discuss your office productivity needs.

Encryption is Your Friend

I’m sure you’ve heard of encryption. You may not know exactly what it’s used for when it comes to security.

Encrypting the hard drive on your company laptops is an extremely important way to protect your data from physical theft. Using full-disk encryption means everything that goes on the hard drive is encrypted automatically. This can be a literal lifesaver if somebody ever gets hold of your laptop and tries to access your email, documents, pictures, and cloud apps.

Encryption is like a deadbolt on a door.

To get access to a fully encrypted hard drive, criminals need to have physical access to the device, and your password. If they don’t have both… your data is safe.

One of the foundational goals of Cyclone 365 is to enhance the physical security of your company devices. This prevents total compromise of your sensitive documents and access to cloud services on the off, but very real, chance that your laptops or tablets are lost or stolen by an opportunist or competitor.

Click to Call or Email us today to schedule a meeting to discuss your physical security needs.