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How virtual reality helps small- and mid-sized businessesMany people associate virtual reality (VR) with gaming, but its applications don't stop there. You might not know it, but the immersive sensory experiences VR can provide are helping businesses in wonderful ways, too. VR training Virtual hands-on training has been proven to be much more effective than in-classroom or e-learning methods. According to PwC, […]

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How virtual reality helps small- and mid-sized businesses

Many people associate virtual reality (VR) with gaming, but its applications don't stop there. You might not know it, but the immersive sensory experiences VR can provide are helping businesses in wonderful ways, too.

VR training

Virtual hands-on training has been proven to be much more effective than in-classroom or e-learning methods. According to PwC, VR learners are:

  • Four times more focused than their e-learning counterparts
  • Four times faster to train than their in-classroom counterparts
  • Nearly four times more emotionally connected to what they were learning than classroom learners
  • 275% more confident to apply the skills they’ve learned from the training

This means that VR learners become productive and efficient much sooner than non-VR learners.

An important benefit of VR training is that it can replicate situations that are dangerous or have adverse consequences if people make wrong or suboptimal choices in real life. Here are a few examples:

  • Pilots log many hours in VR training long before they actually get off the ground.
  • With haptic VR, budding surgeons can learn how it feels to use their scalpels without cutting into actual flesh.
  • Trainees in organizational leadership can learn soft skills via VR training, too. Immersive VR interactions can provide impactful learning experiences with little to no risk of unwanted real-world consequences such as fallouts with colleagues.

Create your own VR prototypes

Thanks to VR, you’ll no longer have to rely on manufacturing prototypes when you want to see what your product physically looks like and how it might work. VR prototypes allow you to make any changes before actual production. Model creation in VR, for example, can save company resources, as these virtual prototypes allow manufacturers to examine a product and make changes without the time and money required to build a physical model.

And if you have the data, you can use VR to simulate real-world conditions. To illustrate, you can see how your automotive suspension design responds to different types of terrain, or how easily your drone can be controlled in a hurricane.

VR for engineers

As with manufacturing, VR is also time- and cost-efficient for engineers, architects, and other professionals who work in large-scale construction. It replaces traditional approaches, such as rendering small 2D models, and offers a more immersive experience that helps in designing structures that are more useful and intuitive for the people who’ll be using these.

VR real estate tours

With VR, real estate agents don’t have to tour potential buyers in the actual property. They can let their clients see what the property looks like in a three-dimensional setting and virtually go from room to room. Brokers can entertain buyers who may be miles away or simply don’t want to spend time going from house to house.

Take customers on an adventure

If you are in a tourism- or adventure-based business, you can use VR to give customers a taste of what to expect from your attractions. If you’re a marketer for an amusement park, you can offer a short VR simulation of one of your most popular rides. Or if you own a resort or campground, you can also create VR simulations of the activities you have in store for visitors.

If done properly, VR has the potential to bring your small- and mid-sized business to new heights. If you have any questions about how you can mesh VR with your company, don’t hesitate to send us an email or give us a call. We’ll be more than happy to assist you.

Published with permission from TechAdvisory.org. Source.

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Successful businesses make technology work for them, not the other way round. When used correctly, technology can make every task much easier to accomplish. So if you’re looking to increase staff efficiency, incorporate technology into your daily operations with the following methods. Change office communication To increase teamwork and productivity, set up instant messaging software […]

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Successful businesses make technology work for them, not the other way round. When used correctly, technology can make every task much easier to accomplish. So if you’re looking to increase staff efficiency, incorporate technology into your daily operations with the following methods.

Change office communication

To increase teamwork and productivity, set up instant messaging software such as Slack or Microsoft Teams. These platforms allow employees to communicate in real time instead of communicating through asynchronous methods like email. You can instantly send messages and share files in team chat rooms, saving precious time and allowing you to get more work done. This is especially useful in enabling communications when everyone is working remotely

Install video conferencing

Rather than spending hours getting to and from meetings outside your office, opt for a networked phone solution that offers video calls and conferencing. This way, you can hold a video conference to discuss business matters while in the office, at home, or abroad. You can also record the call so everyone can actively participate in the meeting and review important details for later without having to pause to take notes.

Implement ERP software

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is a type of software that organizations use to manage various business processes like accounting, project management, and supply chain management. ERP software provides employees with up-to-date business information that they can easily access and use. It eliminates redundant data entry and reduces the number of spreadsheets that are used to record critical business data by storing information in a centralized database.

Once information is in one place, managers have complete visibility across departments, allowing them to make smarter decisions and eliminating organizational silos. For example, supply chain managers can quickly detect when store shelves need to be replenished and send purchase orders to accounting teams for approval.

Upgrade workstations

Outdated technologies and workstations limit your business’s progress, and are a hindrance to developing clued-up, efficient employees. Aging systems and slow networks can frustrate your team and hamper productivity.

That’s why it’s important to thoroughly assess your current workstations, applications, hardware, and tools. While this doesn't mean that you have to buy a new set of workstations for your entire company, you should at least replace obsolete equipment with more modern machines In addition, make sure all software and applications are up to date to ensure maximum efficiency and employee satisfaction.

To get the maximum return on your technology investment, it’s also important to partner with a knowledgeable and reliable service provider. Get in touch with our IT experts today to find out how we can implement technology to help your employees become more efficient and productive.

Published with permission from TechAdvisory.org. Source.

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3 Questions to ask before replacing your serversYour company’s servers will eventually need to be replaced. To conserve and maximize your resources, you need to anticipate the best time to do this, as well as consider alternatives that offer the same — if not better — outcomes for your business. When do my servers need to be replaced? This is a difficult […]

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3 Questions to ask before replacing your servers

Your company’s servers will eventually need to be replaced. To conserve and maximize your resources, you need to anticipate the best time to do this, as well as consider alternatives that offer the same — if not better — outcomes for your business.

When do my servers need to be replaced?

This is a difficult question, but there are two factors you will want to consider: age and performance. The useful life of a server is around three years. While it’s not unheard of for servers to function properly beyond year three, relying on them past this point can be risky, as hardware problems may occur more often. This means you will have to deal with costly repairs and possible sudden downtime.

In terms of performance, it doesn’t make sense to keep your servers around until year three if they are slow and too costly to maintain. It’s important to compare how much money you will lose in repairs and downtime versus the cost of buying new hardware.

Do I have an alternative to buying new servers?

Believe it or not, the answer to your server problems might not necessarily be purchasing more physical servers. One solution is to embrace server virtualization. This process allows your servers to be stored and maintained off-site, with all your resources being delivered to your office via the internet.

There are two notable benefits of virtualizing your servers. First, you don’t have to spend a ton of money on new equipment. Second, virtualization is a scalable technology, meaning you only pay for the data capacity you use. For instance, you can have just two and a half servers, if that’s all your business needs. This is in contrast to having physical equipment, which would require your business to either make do with two servers or splurge and buy a third one even if you didn’t need all of that space.

Of course, there are a few things you need to consider before making the switch to server virtualization. One of the biggest issues is security. Ask yourself if you feel comfortable keeping all of your data off-site. While this isn’t a concern for some companies, others may not see this as palatable. There are several workarounds to this issue, including the hybrid option where you keep sensitive data on-site and everything else off-site.

Can I do anything to prevent a full-scale server replacement?

Yes. It’s certainly possible for you to buy some time and give your current servers additional life, but these are short-term fixes, not long-term solutions. Server upgrades are a good place to start if your servers are less than three years old but are performing poorly. Installing additional CPUs or memory may increase server performance at a fraction of the cost of buying new servers.

It’s also possible to extend the life of servers that may have four or five years of wear-and-tear on them via repurposing. Instead of swapping out all of your servers, use the old ones for non-critical processes and purchase new ones to handle critical workloads. This will help you get a better ROI on your technology while avoiding a wholesale hardware purchase, which could cripple your budget.

If you have any questions about your servers and how you can increase their performance, get in touch with us today. We can help you procure new hardware or explore other alternatives such as server virtualization.

Published with permission from TechAdvisory.org. Source.

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What are the different Microsoft 365 plans and what are their features?Microsoft 365’s plan segmentations are complicated, so here’s a simple primer on what to expect with each suite. This article should provide you with enough information to decide which Microsoft 365 plan is ideal for your business. Information workers or frontline workers? Microsoft 365 is the obvious choice if you’re running cloud-based business systems, but […]

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What are the different Microsoft 365 plans and what are their features?

Microsoft 365’s plan segmentations are complicated, so here’s a simple primer on what to expect with each suite. This article should provide you with enough information to decide which Microsoft 365 plan is ideal for your business.

Information workers or frontline workers?

Microsoft 365 is the obvious choice if you’re running cloud-based business systems, but the main question is which suite will serve your needs best. Microsoft has packaged their Microsoft 365 offerings to fall under two types of bundles: Information Worker plans and Frontline Worker plans. Both of these plans will give you access to Office 365 and file hosting service OneDrive, but there are significant differences between the two.

Under the Information Worker suite, there are two Microsoft 365 plans you can customize as per your needs: E3 and E5. You can expand said suite with specific service sets your business needs, such as a standalone Office 365 system, Enterprise Mobility + Security tools, and even sets of the Windows 10 operating system. Meanwhile, the Frontline Worker suite (F1, F3, and F5) is more compact, with Office 365 F3 being the only available add-on.

Microsoft 365 E3 and E5 plans have unlimited archive and mail storage space. They also come with advanced analytics tools such as Delve, MyAnalytics, and PowerBI, all of which are unavailable on the Frontliner plans. Information Worker plans also include access management, threat protection, endpoint management, and other advanced tools absent in the Frontline Worker suite.

In terms of SharePoint, a collaborative platform and document and storage system, Frontline Worker plans are short on enterprise search, Excel services, and Visio — a diagramming and vector graphics app — features. Frontline Worker plans also do not have unified communications.

With these points in mind, it may seem like Information Worker subscriptions are superior — and in many ways, they are — but Frontline Worker plans are more suited for smaller companies running on a tight budget. Microsoft 365 F1 and F3 cost $2.25 and $8 per user per month, respectively, while Office 365 plans E1, E3, and E5 cost $8, $20, and $35 per user per month, respectively.

As a general rule, only consider subscribing to the Information Worker plans when your employee headcount exceeds 50 people and users require more storage space solutions and advanced analytics. Otherwise, Frontline Worker plans should suffice.

E3 or E5

Once you’ve decided to go for the Microsoft 365 Information Worker plans, you need to choose which plan (E3 or E5) suits your business requirements.

E3 offers basic solutions, such as Outlook, Word, OneNote, PowerPoint, and Excel for $32 per month. It also provides access to SharePoint Team sites, video conferencing, and Yammer for social media for businesses.

E5, on the other hand, provides all E3 features together with unified communications, PowerBI, Microsoft Defender, Application Guard, and Safe Documents. It also comes with more cloud security tools, risk-based conditional access, privileged identity management, and both automatic and machine learning-based sensitivity labels. E5 costs $57 per month.

Small- and medium-sized businesses often select E3 and subscribe to third-party applications for their cloud security and VoIP needs. But for more robust data management and security requirements, the E5 plan is the way to go.

Migrating to Microsoft 365 is not an overnight task, and if you’re still undecided about which plan to opt for, contact us today. We won’t just provide Microsoft 365; we’ll also assess your business to find the best plan that fits your budget and business goals.

Published with permission from TechAdvisory.org. Source.

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