BNMC Blog

While nobody likes to presume the worst will happen in their business, it must be a point that comes into consideration. Statistics are statistics, as they are, and as such there is always the chance—a considerable chance, in fact—that your business will suffer from some form of disaster. Due to this, we always recommend that you have some means of protecting your data throughout, with a plan to respond to such events accordingly.

With 2020 in the rear-view mirror, there are many opportunities for your business to embrace technology in 2021 to your benefit. Let’s go over a few ways that you should make use of your IT moving forward.

For the small business, cutting costs or otherwise increasing the value that their technology can provide is an important consideration. To accomplish this, many businesses are now turning to AI-enhanced automation. Let’s see how they are doing so, and how it helps to make their operations more productive.

It wasn’t too long ago that the idea of paying over $1,000 for a new phone was laughable, but now it is the standard for many. Of course, not everyone is willing or able to drop that much cash, so some manufacturers also offer smartphones that are a little friendlier on the budget for the many people who are due to replace their devices.

For part two of our yearly look at smartphone technology, we thought we would take a look at some new form factors that have hit the market over the past few years. Devices that fold and swivel highlight new entries into the premium smartphone market. Let’s take a look at four of them now and don’t forget to check back next week when we finish our look at 2020’s best budget smartphones. 

The Federal Communications Commission has begun to target social media companies in what seems to be part of an overtly political act by the White House ahead of November’s elections. Today, we will take a look at Section 230, how it currently gives social media power that some politicians are uncomfortable with, and what they plan to do about it.

Smart assistants are one of the most intriguing and confounding technologies developed over the past decade. At the time of this writing, over 150 million smart speakers are in 60 million homes in the United States, when you add in the smart assistants available on mobile devices and other various smart devices, you’re talking a billion people actively using some type of smart assistant. Over the past couple of years, you’re beginning to see these assistants being used more for business and this has made certain security-minded people a little weary of them. Let’s take a look at some of the security questions surrounding the smart assistants.

More than ever, data fuels business decision making. To get the best use out of the data your business collects, automated tools can be used. This eliminates the (often impossible) task of manually getting the data together and then analyzing it. Today, we’ll talk about data automation and how rethinking how you look at your data can really help your business improve its operations.

Small business owners have to confront a lot of issues, with more every day. As your business grows, however, there are too many for you to manage on your own. If your business is too big to control, you will need to expand on your strategies. Today, we will take a look at how decision-making shifts when your business grows. 

While it is very, very hard to say that much good has come from the COVID-19 pandemic, much less to make light of it, it is an important exercise for all of us to take. That’s why we wanted to take a few moments to reflect on the advancements—including an objectively silly one—that this time has helped foster.

To succeed in business, you need to cultivate relationships with the people you call your prospects and clients. Like any relationship, this takes a lot of work, never mind the fact that you’re dealing with hundreds instead of just one. However, there is a solution to help you with this, called a CRM, and its integrations offer nothing but benefit. Let’s discuss.

Businesses of all sizes have budgetary considerations to observe, so it is crucial that any investments into their operations are optimized to meet each business’ individual goals. With the assistance of a managed service provider, this process is simplified. Let’s go over a few ways that a business can push its IT investment further, especially if it has subscribed to managed services.

Businesses need access to some considerable amounts of data these days, regardless of their size, which means that even a small business has a few things to weigh out. For instance, should they keep their IT in-house with on-premise solutions, or should they cast their gaze at cloud-hosted solutions? Let’s consider the benefits available for either.

We’re just shy of halfway through 2020, and it is already apparent that this will go down as one of the most challenging years for businesses around the world for some time. With many businesses facing extensive and continued pauses in their operations, many will be looking for opportunities to get more out of their investments. Managed IT services are one such opportunity.

Environmentally-friendly business practices are a fundamentally good thing for a business to implement. Not only is it better for planet Earth for businesses to adopt green practices, doing so might even save your business a little green in the long term. We’ve put together a few ways that you could start:

As businesses have come to rely on increasing amounts of data, the importance of keeping this data organized and usable has also increased. Therefore, databases are a critical consideration for any business that wants to gain as much value as they can from their collected data. However, a database can only be useful if a database management system is involved. Let’s go into why this is.

Downtime avoidance isn't exactly an art, but organizations that do it best often find themselves in much better positions than competitors that deal with more downtime. They deal with the expense of it, the lack of productivity that comes from it, and the multitude of ways where they can avoid it. Uptime is the name of the game, and today, we’re going to talk a little bit about how we like to remove downtime from the scenario. 

Innovation is a core necessity of the market economy. Taking good ideas and making them more dynamic and practical fuels economic growth, efficiency, and creates a better standard of living for the entire culture. IT is now firmly transforming the way that business is done with innovative tools and strategies. Today, we’ll look at some of the shifts we are seeing come about as a result of information technology. 

Augmented reality is a technology that has been around for a while, and has been thought of as one of the “next big things” for the past few years. AR almost broke out of obscurity with the development of Google Glass earlier in the decade, but with well-founded security and privacy concerns that come with providing the technology that makes AR possible, the market dropped out. That’s not to say that AR is done, however. In fact, it seems as with the growth of new technologies, AR is also beginning to grow.

Most of us are old enough to remember when you had to bring your computer into the shop to get it fixed. This break/fix method in neither affordable nor efficient when you are dealing with several computers. IT services and support has evolved and now is available around the clock though a managed service provider. Businesses that once had to spend large parts of their operational capital on IT administrators now have the opportunity to cut their IT support costs and get comprehensive support regardless.