Turn Your Clients into Fans

We are all in the business of creating wealth. Yes, each one of us!

As a service provider, if you really wish to turn your clients into fans, you’d have to learn the art of “creating wealth” for them.

Here’s what you can do:

1. If they are paying you $100, set yourself on a mission to help them get a positive return on this investment.

2. Be professional; that doesn't mean you cannot care for their interests as friends do.

3. Promise less and deliver more; help them add your company to their “circle of trust”.

4. Be genuinely concerned about client’s business interests and if the need be, walk an extra mile when you can.

5. Stick to a strong code of business ethics; don’t hesitate to show it.

6. Exhibit honesty even if it means you suffer bearable losses; you will gain on other fronts for sure; it’s the law of the Universe.

But the wealth here is not just money. That’s just one of the many things. Wealth may include money, happiness, satisfaction, spiritual growth and everything else that matters to us mortals. Whether your clients understand this simple concept or not, be aware that they are subconsciously seeking it from you.  

Give it to them and they will admire you forever. Needless to mention, when you create wealth for others, it comes back manifold to you! Thank the grand scheme of the Universe for that. 

Ways of Adding Value with Cloud Computing

As the wave of Cloud computing gathers speed, companies, big and small, are acknowledging the fact that various economic benefits can be entailed by using services of Cloud providers. The economics of IT is changing, and perhaps what is heartening for people choosing to go the Cloud way, is that the trend shows little signs of slowly any time soon. It is believed that, or rather theoretically proven that the trend of Cloud is slated to grow and manifold with the benefits increasing exponentially. As a result of the economic value that Cloud provides, soon money could be thrust into other areas of concern for large economies thereby ushering an era of change through IT alone.

Some of the value adds that Cloud can provide to your business are:

1. Elastic consumption

If you have implemented cloud in your company, you are probably no longer doing manual tasks that you used to before. Cloud introduces the automation of most practices in a company which make it flexible for the financial investors in the firm to save some money. As a result, significant capital expenditure is eliminated and a company enjoys the privilege of pay-as-you-go services. Migrating to cloud eliminates risks that are usually associated with static IT projects, thereby allowing the business to maintain its agility. This elasticity, offered by Cloud services enables a company to take on infrastructural challenges that their own in-house IT department would not be able to support. Consequently, the bedrocks of your business become elastic enough to be scale a company both ways, with immense ease, and without compromising on maintaining continuity and growth.

2. The economy of its scale

Most companies according to a recent study by Microsoft are only just waking to the realization that Cloud implementation can significantly cut costs. According to the analysis the scale of economics as was significantly low, as compared to the latest findings. The current trend suggests that cloud could one day deliver computing strength at costs 80 percent lower than the current prices. This trend has been predicated on three factors: the supply side, where Cloud can purchase and operate with cheaper infrastructure; demand-side, where these purchases can be utilized efficiently by pooling users; and multi-tenancy, which allows the sharing of resources, thereby sharing cost. For companies to foster and take complete advantage of the Cloud computing trend, it is essential to understand the underlying economics as well.

3. It promotes innovation
One of the more romantic advantages for implementing Cloud is that it frees your resources for other tasks. Most companies, especially the smaller ones bank on keeping their heads above water, by at least keeping the office and their infrastructure in place. Maintenance alone, of this infrastructure can eat away into a company’s revenue stream, thereby leaving little scope for investment into noble initiatives, or even new user and in-house change requests. This is where Cloud would provide stakeholders a breather. By freeing resources, that were previously pillaring the company’s foundation, can also contribute towards experimentation and genesis of fresh ideas. Resources that are freed, as a result of Cloud implementation can prove to be more productive as compared to earlier times.

Hybrid Clouds: When You May Want to Use Them

When moving into the cloud, you should know what to expect from your cloud provider. For example, where the public cloud offers flexibility and cost-efficiency, the private cloud ensures optimal security. And when you want the best of both worlds, the hybrid cloud is the only option!

Here is what you may need hybrid cloud computing solutions for:

Benefits of Both Worlds: 
A hybrid cloud can allow your small business to get the benefits of both the public and private clouds. You can accelerate your noncritical business operations with the cost-effectiveness of the public cloud, as well as make the most of the firewalled safety of a private cloud for protecting your sensitive data and applications.

Enhanced Scalability and Cost-Savings:
The hybrid cloud frees businesses from the responsibility of purchasing and setting up expensive hardware. They don’t even need to hire or expand their own IT staff and on-site teams. This is how they can save time and money both.

Better Accessibility: 
You can access your programs and applications at any time within the hybrid cloud environment. This allows you to build a mobile and more active workforce and expand your operations ahead of your current location.

Increased Agility and Performance: Using a hybrid cloud, you can move your programs flawlessly between the public and private clouds. This is how you can meet all your IT requirements in a cost-effective manner, since you don’t need to build and maintain your own in-house computer 

6 Ways to Make Your Customer Service Better

Regardless of how small or big an organization you are, the key to success and growth is excellent customer service. In fact, smarter businesses have begun to use it as a potent marketing tool today!

Here are top 6 ways to take your customer service to the next level:

1. Listen!

Irrespective of the expertise you have, the key is to develop a habit of listening carefully and patiently to your customers. They want you to listen, and not impose your policies on them. Setting your listening skills and expertise into harmony might work though!

2. Respond Fast

Comes what may, your ultimate purpose should be to deliver best possible level of service. In case immediate service or product delivery is not possible, respond using sensible alternatives. You can, for example, send emails the same day.

3. Hold Customers

While your customers can be irresponsible, you can’t. At times, they will lack information you need in order to deliver assistance. Whatever the case, it is on your part to hold and satisfy your customers.

4. Gain Customer Trust

As a business, you ought to win customer trust to survive and thrive. If it requires you to pamper and have compassion for your customers, do it. Once they begin to trust you, getting into lasting business relationships will become easier.

5. Maintain Quality

Keeping pace with customer requirements never means you can afford to sacrifice quality. It is satisfaction that’ll bind your customers to your company at the ends of the day. Growth is essential, but steadiness is more important.

6. Don’t Compromise Your Values 

Give customer service a significant position in your company’s business policy. After all, your enterprise is all about having and serving customers. Once all your employees and associates have understood the significance of quality customer service, you’ll ensure quick yet lasting growth!  

Carefully Evaluate Access Controls over Data for Greater Security

The most common way of accessing data within organizations is through the applications that build, edit and maintain it.

Today, however, several new methods of data accessibility are evolving and coming into use. Network Operating System, Database and Primary Server are the best examples.

Regardless of what means of data accessibility you are using as a business, it is important to frequently evaluate your access control for betterdata security!

Here is how you can do it:

Be Strict about Access Control Passwords

Logical access controls associated with passwords and other login credentials encompass a variety of data security methods and components. This is the reason why IT veterans emphasize the importance of following and repeating the password standards within enterprises of all types and sizes. Once you begin to follow these guidelines, you can make your passwords and credentials more reliable.

The idea is to:

• Make it as difficult as possible for hackers to guess and break passwords. Keeping the length of a password perfect is one of the ways of achieving it.
• Another useful trick is to increase the complexity of password characters, making it almost impossible to crack them. It is even more important to keep changing password patterns from time to time.
• Last but not least, help your employees and associates to develop a habit of logging out of all the systems before leaving the workstation. This will prevent unauthorized access to critical data and information.

Restrict the Applications

All the read-write (RW) applications allow a user to access the underlying data and information. So, make all such applications that you are using restricted to any users who doesn’t need them. That means not all employees should be able to access all applications. Try to get applications that have unique access controls.

Secure Server and NOS 

These two means of data accessibility are highly prone to multiple security-related risks. The first step towards making them more secure is to follow basic password standards, particularly for a sever. In addition, consider examining all the sharing activities taking place via the server and NOS.

Forbid the sharing of your crucial data, excepting some authorized members or a group of users. For example, there is no need to share a spreadsheet made for financial reporting with all users.

Use Firewall Control

When it comes to allowing or disallowing critical data access to users, firewall is always the best option. It is equally important to frequently test it for flawless access controls, especially for users entering externally. Once you have a firewall up and running, it will force the system to authenticate every external user according to your set access rights. 

Cloud Storage: Comparison of Providers and Solutions

The term “Cloud Storage” is sufficient in itself to stir up a debate in even the sanest of conversations. However, even the most anti-cloud naysayer would agree that cloud is the best solution for disaster recovery. Enterprise cloud storage providers understand that their clients are looking for security, reliability and redundancy. They are also aware of the fact that there is a lot of fear about the safety with most companies taking a staggered approach when moving to cloud storage, from archive backups to live storage. 

So, to make it convenient for you to select the best service for your company, below is a list of top 3 cloud storage providers who are well equipped with the resources to handle your company’s bytes in bulk:

1.      Amazon S3          

Amazon S3 comes under AWS umbrella and covers major internet hubs including Pinterest and Reddit. It costs $0.055/GB per month if you occupy over 5,000TB on Amazon's cloud. In case the data you’re storing does not fall under the mission-critical variety, then the company’s Reduced Redundancy Storage (RRS) reduces the price to $0.037/GB per month.

You can opt to store your data in any one of the many geographic locations. You can however lower the latency by selecting a location close to your home. However, considering a disaster recovery standpoint, choosing a distant location makes sense too.

2.      Google Cloud Storage

Part of the Google cloud Platform, Google Cloud Storage is specifically designed for big businesses in need of big-time storage requirements. Google storage services are charged at highly competitive prices, with 4,500TB costing $0.054/GB per month. Also the Durable Reduced Availability, as compared to Amazon S3 is slightly cheaper at $0.042/GB per month.

To safeguard the data of your enterprise, Google stores it redundantly at several different geographical locations. In addition, the company offers a little more piece of mind by constructing its own proprietary security technologies into Google Cloud Storage.

3.      Rackspace Cloud Files

It can rightly be said that Rackspace knows cloud computing pretty well. Below the 1PB/1024TB threshold, the prices charged by the company starts at $0.075/GB per month on a purchase of over 500TB of storage. However, the prices increase slightly in case you require less storage.

Rackspace's unique selling point is its Akamai CDN file transfer method. Here the company can use 213 Akamai edge locations to trasfer files over the Internet that too in record time. So, instead of transferring files from one of Rackspace's origin servers, Akamai CDN is utilized to deliver the files regionally. It’s beneficial for big businesses with numerous offices and mobile employees or websites received lots of traffic globally. 

How to Secure Your File Sharing and Sync Process

For last couple of technologically advanced years, IT Support has undergone several changes and so have file synchronization and sharing techniques. The result is a huge variety of platforms that can serve the purpose equally efficiently.

While options are numerous, from Box and Google Drive to Dropbox and Microsoft SkyDrive, you should choose what is right and can meet your unique requirements! The best way would be to compare them on the basis of different objectives that you may have.

Here is how different tools can help you secure your file sync and sharing process:

Efficiency in Terms of Storage Space

Regardless of which file sync and share platform you are using, your ultimate purpose is storage. So, it is important that you know how much storage space you are getting with different platforms.

SkyDrive leads the charge in that case. Dropbox and YouSendIt can provide you with just 2GB at the best. Unfortunately, this is less than the half of total storage space average file-sync services offer! Also, there are several other reasons other than the storage space to give SkyDrive a try.

Cost-Effectiveness

All of the popular file sync and sharing tools offered by IT Services charge on monthly basis. Again, SkyDrive from Microsoft is your most cost-effective platform. Interestingly, its yearly rates are less compared to virtually all major competitors.

SkyDrive and SugarSync are the only tools that provide users with most options for plans to choose from. YouSendIt comes with probably the worst plan – you are forced to either keep sticking to the $14.99 plan or pay $9.99 for 5GB. Google upgrades Gmail accounts of paid users only.

Safety

When choosing a file sync and sharing platform, another big requirement from users is security. This is always a big concern for those who need to share or upload files with personal information. So, whatever your requirements, make sure you know what different companies are doing to secure uploads and downloads.

Even if you don’t have much idea about what to look for, you should ask questions about SSL support at least. This is a technique used to encrypt your data so that only the sender and the receiver can read it.

Most of these platforms provide you with a SLL connection. And when it comes to encoded storage of files, SkyDrive, Google Drive and Box are going to disappoint you. Give one out of Dropbox, YouSendIt or SugarSync a try, depending upon your needs and keeping other features in mind.

Mobile Device Support

You’ll always want to be able to sync your systems with mobile devices and access data and information. Amazingly, SugarSync supports more (almost all!) mobile devices compared to other platforms!

While most of them really like iPhone, Blackberry is hardly supported by half of them. Box which’s supporting most mobile devices is another great option here.