What are the significant aspects to consider system integration in an enterprise or business?

New Jersey businesses rely on multiple business IT systems like customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) tools to stay on top of their operations and maintain competitive advantage. Like a house requires a solid foundation, enterprises require a dependable, secure, and effective IT system.

This can only be accomplished by ensuring every part of the business is properly connected and communicating with one another. For this reason, many organizations turn to managed IT providers for their system integration needs.

Related article: Make business operations more efficient by automating these processes

What is system integration?

System integration is the process of combining multiple systems or applications together to form a cohesive IT environment, which is essential for many businesses that rely on various apps and hardware. Integrating these multiple interconnected systems and devices ensures that they meet the business's requirements and efficiently perform everything you need them to do, whether it's printing reports, collecting data, or a host of other functions.

A well-integrated system is one that has all of its parts communicating clearly with one another. It’s like building a team of employees with good chemistry and great camaraderie — they will work well together because they’re attuned to each other’s strengths, weaknesses, needs, and capabilities. Likewise, business systems comprising machines, software, and people should all work in perfect sync so that tasks are completed as efficiently and as productively as possible.

What are the benefits of system integration?

The true benefits of system integration may differ from company to company, as numerous variables are at play. Generally, the following are the key benefits of system integration:

Consistency

The integration of ERP and CRM systems allows for the seamless sharing of consistent data across multiple applications. For example, on an unintegrated system, one department may make updates to a customer's address, but another department may not receive that information. Integrating both systems resolves the issues caused by conflicting information, increasing efficiency and quality in business processes as a whole.

Business agility

The proper integration of systems and data between departments and organizations makes a business more agile. It ensures healthy access to valuable information while making costs as predictable as possible. This means that businesses can continue operating optimally during difficult times, improving their chances of survival and even making growth an inexpensive prospect to aim for.

Visibility

In improperly integrated systems, blind spots tend to occur as business components aren’t configured to communicate effectively with one another, which can then cause some information to get lost in traffic. This can lead to inaccurate analytics and even cybersecurity problems. A well-integrated IT system will ensure that you have visibility and control over every aspect of your information system.

FREE eBook: Managed IT: Your Ally Against Downtime

How can a managed IT provider help with system integration?

Managed IT services can help with system integration by letting an experienced team of tech professionals handle the integration process and ensure it goes smoothly. The service typically includes planning, installation and configuration, testing, end user training, and ongoing support. It’s also worth noting that your managed IT providers’ depth of experience in system integration will play a huge role in the overall quality and reliability of your system. Their experience with different IT components is valuable in determining which ones work best with other components, as well as to anticipate any issues that certain component pairs may commonly encounter.

Still a little hazy on the benefits of system integration for businesses? Give us a call so you can learn more about how Online Computers’ system integration services will benefit your business infrastructure. Contact us today to schedule an assessment.

Page 2

If your business is at the point where you’re thinking about hiring a full-time IT tech, congratulations! Having enough consistent needs to fill this role means you’ve worked hard and made good decisions that drove business growth. Our best advice? Don’t stop now!

Moving forward with hiring requires a lot of analysis to avoid major consequences down the line, though. One of the biggest decisions is whether you’ll hire someone directly or use a third-party MSP (Managed Service Provider). In this article, we’ll get into the specifics of both scenarios.

Why Do You Need an IT Tech at All?

In the past, business people and tech people were two different breeds. Over the years, the gap has gradually shrunk to the point that many people are tech-savvy enough to get by for the little things. As your business has grown, though, you likely have needed to delegate many of your previous duties, like IT — even if you feel perfectly capable of handling them yourself. After all, when do you think was the last time Jeff Bezos packaged a shipment? Your IT needs have also likely grown much more complex.

If you don’t choose to delegate now, you fall into a major pitfall of leaving IT duties unassigned. In our current landscape, leaving an IT post open could be a death wish. Cyber attacks of all types are on the rise, and the amount of damage each one could impose is ballooning. For example, in 2016, the average ransomware attacker demanded $522. In 2020, that average sits around $84,000! Sadly, many of these attacks take place as a result of not having someone on the wheel.

In addition, there’s the issue of efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Being lax over time can make your systems out of date, making it harder for everyone to get their work done at a reasonable rate. In addition, only replacing equipment when it’s broken and not when it is functionally obsolete can create situations where portions of your entire workforce will be unable to do any work at all for a time.

An In-House Solution

So, let’s say you’re on board with having one or more people make up your IT team, and you make the decision to hire them directly. One certain benefit is that you can look through a collection of qualified candidates and pick just the right person(s) that you want! But then the other shoe drops.

Just like any other employee, before you hire someone for your IT needs, you have to consider the costs. For instance, the average price of an IT professional is $60,000 per year. Alright, so you budget out $60,000 — then you’re all set, right? Far from it!

Where is this person going to work? Maybe you already have space for them, but these professionals require more expensive hardware and monitor setups. Additionally, you need to factor in the network diagnostic software plus any industry-specific software. Since they’ll generally be on call, they’ll need a phone with a good plan so you can always reach them and possibly a company car (or at least some form of vehicle reimbursement) if you have multiple locations. Don’t forget that expense account!

Besides the specific expenses mentioned above, remember that this person is still an employee, so you have all the other general costs your other employees have associated with them. This can include health/life insurance, vacation time, sick time, 401K plus any bonuses or overtime pay they may rack up.

And what do you do if they leave? The implicit and explicit costs can be truly staggering when you take the time to add it all up.

A Safer Option

In the past, the above option was the only choice most employers had available to them. Based on the high costs (both known and unknown) associated with hiring an IT professional, it’s no surprise that companies have flocked to an alternative option: MSPs.

With an MSP, you have all the benefits of a full-time employee without the downsides.

They will be consistently available, knowledgeable in your network, and focused entirely on IT rather than other day job expectations. Need assistance when it’s time for regular upgrades or maintenance? Want someone to redesign your entire IT setup? Looking for someone to completely take over your IT operations, including telephone, so you can focus 100% on your core business? These are the sorts of services you can get out of an MSP.

Even better, the price you sign in the contract is the price you know you have to pay month after month, unlike the many unknown costs of an employee. There are no HR issues to worry about and the work is on the shoulders of an entire team, not an individual.

If your company is at the point where you know you need dedicated IT personnel but are unsure about which direction you’d like to go, contact us ASAP. We would be more than happy to go over your needs and discuss the best options.

Ready to take the next step? Online Computers’ team of IT professionals can help you keep your business running with minimal downtime. Give us a call today at 800-985-9365 or email us at to learn more.

Page 3

Businesses, like human beings, need fully functioning organs to grow and thrive. In this sense, your business’s data center is like a person’s nervous system, as it is responsible for sending, receiving, and processing information for the entire body to function properly. To ensure that your company’s nervous system is communicating properly with other parts, you should use the correct cabling for certain business components.

Related article: Practical tips to increase internet speed for your New Jersey office

With all the different business tools you use such as computers, VoIP phones, servers, and more, you’ll need different types of cabling to ensure each component is working optimally. Understanding the roles and features of each type of cable will also help you achieve optimum performance.

Here are the different types of cabling offered by Online Computers, as well as their common uses:

Fiber optic cabling

Fiber optic cables carry light rather than electrical signals. These are made of glass or plastic fibers that are capable of carrying huge amounts of data at high speeds. Fiber optic cables are immune to interference and provide data transmission rates of up to 1 terabit per second (or around 125 gigabytes per second).

Fiber optic cables are designed for high-performance networking and telecommunications. They’re also great for long-distance cabling, so keep this in mind if your office requires some extreme cabling requirements. The reliability and performance of fiber optic cables is why they are the preferred data transfer medium for VoIP networks.

Unshielded twisted pair cabling

Unshielded twisted pair (UTP) cables are cables consisting of four twisted pairs of copper wires used for data transmission and power distribution. These cables are used mainly as Ethernet and/or telephone cabling.

Most UTP cables are Category 5e or 6, but higher-bandwidth Cat8 cables are becoming popular these days because of their lower latency. These cables are usually terminated by RJ45 connectors used for Ethernet network installations. UTP cables are the most common type of cable used in modern businesses, as it is immune to interference and can provide data transmission rates of up to 1,000 megabytes per second.

Shielded twisted pair cabling

Shielded twisted pair (STP) cables are similar to UTPs, but have an extra layer of insulation around each pair of twisted wire called the shield. This shield keeps any electromagnetic noise generated by nearby electrical equipment from interfering with the signals carried by the wires within the cable. The shield typically comes in the form of a foil wrapping or copper braid jacket that envelops the UTP before it is encased in its outer jacket.

The downside of STPs is that they are thicker, more rigid, and less flexible, making them more difficult to install. They also have special connectors that are usually not compatible with UTP connectors, so if you decide that you want to replace STP cables with UTP, this can become an issue.

Related article: How to solve the 5 most common VoIP issues

Coaxial cabling

Cable operators, telephone companies, and internet providers all use coaxial cable to transmit data, video, and voice communications to clients across the world. This type of cable has also been utilized in homes as a piece of telecommunications technology since the early 20th century. Coaxial cabling is known for efficient and accurate transmission of signals, but its main drawback is that it can be prone to interference from fiber optic and wireless signals.

Online Computers cabling solutions

Our friendly support staff will help you determine the cabling types and components that best suit your needs. Please feel free to contact us if you have any queries about our cabling services. We're here to help!

Page 4

IT Professional Job Description – What do they really do?

So, you’re working on drafting an IT professional job description. This series covers the most important factors to consider before you hire an in-house IT tech or team. Our last article reviewed the hidden costs of hiring an IT Professional. Now, we’re talking about what IT actually does besides ask if you turned your computer off and back on again.

Depending on the size of your organization, work in IT can be complicated and time-consuming. Let’s go over the major job responsibilities of IT professionals beyond tech support and equipment maintenance.

Vendor Management

Outside organizations most often provide your Internet, copy machine, phone system, and computer equipment. When they break, need maintenance, or require warranty replacement, the IT person interacts with the vendor. Oftentimes, they’re responsible for communicating between multiple vendors that frequently point fingers at each other. The IT person spends a great deal of time sorting out the underlying issues, determining what’s really wrong, and implementing a fix. If they can’t fix the problem themselves, their effort goes to convincing a vendor to help.

Keeping Up with the Technologies

While many of us might be preoccupied with what our favorite celebrities are up to on any given day, IT personnel are keeping themselves informed on what’s going on in the world of tech outside their organizations.

Software

Remember when you bought software and it stayed exactly the same until you went to the store and bought the newest version? These days, software updates happen regularly, sometimes multiple times a week. However, since various companies often make the programs, they tend not to play well together. This means that your IT techs need to understand what the updates are, what benefits they could bring, as well as when and how they should be implemented, if at all.

In addition, they’re consistently looking out for new software that might be better than what’s currently in use.

New Tech

Sometimes it’s best to completely scrap a system and start over. For instance, while there may be improvements you can make to enhance your telecom system, perhaps you should upgrade to a pure VoIP communication system. If you’re still running servers on-site, perhaps it’s time to think about a virtual office. If your hardware is over three years old, it’s time to start planning for a refresh. An IT person must remain on top of all technology and know about the new innovations that will make your business more efficient.

Security

This is the elephant in the room right now. Cyber threats are not only growing by the day, but they’re also changing. Being up to date is no longer an issue of merely updating your antivirus software.  Unfortunately, many of the attacks we see are the result of someone falling asleep at the wheel. Hackers are continuing to innovate new ways to get to their targets cause damage.

The best way for IT professionals to make themselves useful in this regard is to not only update software and the network but to educate the rest of the company on ways to keep from being the accidental cause of a data breach. This crisis prevention is one of the most important and proactive jobs for a successful IT professional.

The Sad Truth

You may have noticed the number of duties in this article outside of fixing broken technology. If it seems like way too much work for one person, that’s because it is. To fulfill all of the responsibilities of a responsible IT professional, you would need to have multiple people with a variety of skill sets. Of course, this adds to the expense of a department that’s supposed to help you keep costs down and simplify operations.

For this and other reasons, many companies turn to MSPs for their IT needs. You have access to a team of professionals that not only have the expertise needed to do the job of an in-house IT department, but also have the time, opportunity, and personnel to stay up to date on the latest developments.

Do you find your business needing more assistance with your IT? Have you thought about hiring an IT professional or outsourcing those duties? If the answer to these questions is yes, then contact us today to see how we can maximize efficiency while giving you one less headache to worry about. With our decade of experience, you’ll find yourself on the cutting edge in no time!

Page 5

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) compliance is a complex — but necessary — process for healthcare businesses in the United States, including those in New Jersey. It protects all patient health data from being disclosed without their consent or knowledge. For most large facilities such as hospitals and chain clinics with huge resources and IT infrastructures, achieving HIPAA compliance is easy because they can take advantage of corporate-grade compliance solutions. These solutions make financial sense for their large scale of operations and breadth of clientele.

Smaller healthcare businesses cannot typically afford the same solutions, so they tend to turn to piecemeal solutions derived from existing business platforms such as spreadsheets. And when it comes to cybersecurity, they tend to rely on input and transmission procedures that are tedious and can be prone to errors.

Fortunately, your small- or mid-sized business (SMB) in the healthcare industry can now opt for The Guard HIPAA compliance, which will allow you to meet all HIPAA compliance standards without hurting your budgets.

What is The Guard HIPAA compliance solution?

The Guard is an all-in-one HIPAA compliance solution that addresses every aspect of HIPAA compliance under the law. It is designed to help simplify and streamline your SMB’s compliance-related workload, eliminate input and transmission errors, and raise your compliance profile overall.

What are its benefits and features?

When you sign up with Online Computers for The Guard HIPAA compliance solution, you will receive the following benefits and features along with the software:

Guided risk assessment

Our technical experts will give you a rundown of the standard HIPAA compliance requirements so that you’re informed about how certain data should be stored and transmitted properly. They will also conduct an assessment of your information infrastructure to identify weaknesses or inadequacies, as well as to leverage existing hardware and software to meet HIPAA rules. Finally, you will be provided with an assessment of your organization’s risk profile in terms of its ability to meet HIPAA requirements.

Unlimited employee training

In information security, the human factor is considered to be the last line of protection. By providing unlimited employee training, we can help ensure that your staff are properly equipped to handle data as per HIPAA standards.

Live Compliance Coach support

Key to HIPAA compliance success is understanding how and why each mechanism is in place. The Guard’s unique implementation process includes live support from a Compliance Coach. This will ensure that members of your organization don’t just know how to use the software, but actually understand the reasoning and the processes behind each HIPAA regulation.

Business associate agreements

Your organization will not only be a client, it will be a partner. Signing up for The Guard will automatically make your organization a HIPAA business associate, giving it an additional qualification for connecting with potential clients and suppliers.

Policies and procedures

You will find all HIPAA policies and procedures with The Guard. No need for you to make additional consultations with third-party experts, and no need to second-guess every transaction you take within the system.

HIPAA seal of compliance

Signing up for The Guard and meeting all the advice our Compliance Coach provides will grant your organization a HIPAA Seal of Compliance. This allows your investors, suppliers, clients, and other stakeholders to verify your organization’s HIPAA compliance readiness.

Why should you get The Guard through Online Computers?

Our HIPAA experts at Online Computers will provide you with a software demo before asking for your commitment. We will showcase how The Guard can make your workflows simpler and more efficient, so you can fully gauge whether The Guard is a suitable investment for you.

Aside from making the introduction of the software a breeze, we will also ensure that integration and deployment of The Guard will be as unobtrusive as possible. This is to help limit (or even completely avoid) any downtime for your business. And we will continue to be present for any and all support needs to ensure that your investment is maximized and that your HIPAA compliance is maintained at all times.

Contact us today for any queries and clarifications about The Guard HIPAA compliance software. We will be more than happy to address any questions.