CTN Blog

We hope we aren’t dating ourselves too much by mentioning computer punch cards, but they were once the means of inputting data into a computing device… at least, until the now-ubiquitous mouse and keyboard came into the scene. This variety of interfacing with our devices now seems to be one of the few ways to practically use them. However, other interfaces have emerged - do any of them stand a chance of unseating the keyboard and mouse?

How well do your employees collaborate with one another? Teamwork is essential to the success of any business, but it’s often something that doesn’t come naturally to some users. These days, there are ways you can make communication and teamwork more effective and efficient for your workforce. This week’s tip is dedicated to making this work.

Social media has completely changed the dynamics of how people communicate with one another. While some users might only keep in touch with friends through it, others--including businesses and brands--use it to promote their products. In an age where a picture can appear on thousands of devices all over the world, privacy has become a major concern for anyone using social media.

Microsoft Word’s massive cache of options and its relative ease of use are two of its defining characteristics. This presents organizations and users alike with a large set of ways to set up the word processor. Today, we will take you through Word, providing tips on how to change these settings so that you can get the most out of it.

I have a question for you. When did you last examine the bandwidth that your business Internet package provides you? This is a very important consideration to make, for the sake of productivity. This week, we’ll offer a few tips on how the proper bandwidth can help you get much more out of your IT solutions.

As unfortunate as it is to hear, science has kyboshed the notion that multitasking works. However, while multitasking may not actually have any true benefits to productivity, this doesn’t mean that it is impossible to accomplish more in less time. Today, we’ll give you a better option than multitasking, a process known as parallelism.

You can’t have a successful business without a little bit of productivity. Unfortunately, some office environments can have a negative influence on the way your employees get their work done. Take a moment to ask yourself this question: “Are you simply busy, or are you actually being productive?”

In the business world, productivity is everything, which means that many will try to boost their productivity however they can. Many swear by multitasking, or the practice of juggling tasks to keep themselves fresh and productive. However, evidence shows they are mistaken. We’ll go into why, and offer a few more effective alternatives.

Revenue is a key component of any business, crucial to the continued success and efficacy of it. However, in order to sustain an incoming revenue stream, a business needs to be able to operate efficiently enough to support it. In this week’s tip, we’ll review a few ways that you can build this efficiency in your own operations to assist your efforts to build a prosperous business.

The modern office is filled with distractions, and that’s to say nothing about the everyday user’s life. With so many devices and notifications interrupting focus for users all over the world, it’s more important than ever before to have a strategy for how to deal with these issues and become as productive as possible in the workplace. Today, we’ll be discussing some of the biggest distractions in the workplace and how your employees can overcome them.

If you look around your company, there’s technology that you completely take for granted. No matter if you run a small retail store, a factory, or a multi-location office, your business needs IT to function properly. Today, we will take a look into several ways your organization can use technology to improve your business.

Once thought to be just a cool feature of the Internet--or the entirety of the Internet to your Great Aunt Maddie--instant messaging has a long history on the web. In fact, one could argue that it was the first great Internet-based application. Today, we take a look back at the history of Instant Messaging and how your organization can use it to create a better business.

IT management is critical to the success of your business, but it’s easier said than done. There are countless moving parts that all go into keeping your IT organized. Here are three ways you can make sure IT doesn’t hold your business back from its full potential.

Understanding what your customers need is a crucial first step toward improving the way your organization communicates with them. They expect a certain level of service, so how can you make sure to maintain it while still leveling with them on what they require of your business? A customer relationship management software, or CRM, is invaluable toward this end.

With the exception of a sole proprietorship, a business of any size relies on its team in order to function properly. As a result, this team needs to be able to work together towards a common goal in order to succeed. To accomplish this, collaboration technologies are becoming more and more common in office environments, and generally benefit the performance of the business in its operations.

The business landscape can be unforgiving. It can be filled with landmines that slow progress to a crawl and blitzes that send your head spinning. If you were to compare the business world to history's great battles, technology solutions are a business’s weapons. They are the tools used to make the everyday grind possible. The more advanced an army’s technology, the bigger the edge they have over outfits that don’t have that technology...as long as it works as intended.

Children are the future, as the saying goes, so should the future be taught using tools from the past? While some schools are still using technology that better belongs in the 20th century, others are embracing innovation and teaching in ways that better translate to the “real world.” Let’s take a look at how our evolving technology is transforming the classroom and explore some ways to get it to more students.

As incredible a tool as the Internet truly is, for every website that is beneficial to the workplace, there is another that is certainly the opposite. Naturally, it is these sites that your employees would most likely want to visit if left to their own devices. Sometimes, the best course of action is to remove the temptation and block these websites. For this week’s tip, we’ll talk about a few ways to do so.

With the recent overhaul of Google’s G Suite productivity software products comes a new way to keep your business data secure. We’ll go over some of the major changes introduced in the updates, including the integration of artificial intelligence.

Google’s new services and integrations are openly competing with software like Microsoft, Slack, and Atlassian. We’ll take a closer look at some of the changes made through Google’s G Suite overhaul.

Gmail Upgrades
Google services have changed considerably over the years, but one that hasn’t seen a significant change since 2011 is Gmail. The new designs provide several new functions including a snooze feature that can remove an email from an inbox for a specified length of time. Another feature is Smart Replies which can provide users with A.I.-generated replies to an email with just a click of the mouse. In particular, this is helpful for the mobile app.

In addition to these new features, more focus is being placed on some others that haven’t been as focused on in the past. Google has built several new plugins for its Gmail Add-ons from 2017. If you’re looking at your new Gmail, you can find these options by clicking on the vertical strip of icons in the upper right-hand section of the Gmail interface. There are now plenty of third-party apps that integrate with Gmail, like Trello and Boomerang, as well as several Google products such as Google Keep, Google Calendar, and Google Tasks.

Inside G Suite
If you’re using the latest version of the G Suite, chances are you’ve noticed some changes to the interface itself. There are more integrations with third-party software than ever before, all to help your business improve collaboration and cooperation between departments or individual users. There is new functionality between Hangouts Meet and video conferencing solutions like Microsoft Skype, as well as interoperability between several other applications. These include smart features for Google Calendar and Microsoft Exchange Resource Booking, as well as Google Sheets integration with ERP and CRM solutions.

Google Calendar also now has smart scheduling capabilities that make it even easier to stay organized. Thanks to machine learning, Google products can now take advantage of real language processing to display only the most relevant information. As the interface learns from the user, it will be able to better serve them.

Another great feature is the use of Team Drives. You can create more collaborative environments for your organization’s departments, allowing them to take advantage of Docs, Sheets, and more in all new ways. Google explains this as giving “more granular control” over your organization’s content.

Does your business want to get the most out of its productivity suites? CTN can help. To learn more, reach out to us at (610) 828-5500.

Paper can be incredibly expensive, especially with the quantity that a normal business goes through every single day. However, not only is it expensive on the monetary side, but also on the environmental side as well. By making some changes, you can be more eco-friendly and budget-friendly by reducing the amount of paper waste around your office.