Why Your Company Needs an Email Policy

Email is an important and necessary part of your business. It provides an economical and instant means of communicating with staff, customers, and vendors – that’s both simple to use and enables increased efficiency. An email policy is required to protect this necessary business tool.

An email policy is a legal document that details your organization’s definition of acceptable use for the company email system. It should indicate who emails can be received from or sent to, as well as outline what constitutes appropriate content for work emails.

In addition, having a company email policy will:

Protect the Organization from Liabilities: When all employees read and sign an email policy, it proves they are aware and agree to the information contained in that policy. Should an email be sent that is not considered appropriate content according to the email policy, the employee, not the business, would bear the brunt of liability for any damages or suits brought as a result of their sending an inappropriate email.

Promote a Professional Environment: If email is used only in a professional manner in the workplace, you can be sure that embarrassing mistakes will not occur. For example, if staff are using work email to communicate with friends, the content in those emails are likely to be sloppy, unprofessional, and informal. If those emails accidentally get sent to clients or other professionals – the company image may become damaged. If an email policy does not allow for personal use of the work email system, your staff will remain in a professional mindset and eliminate the potential of personal emails going out to customers.

Increase Productivity: Email tends to be a distraction for employees who are using it for non-professional reasons. If an email policy prohibits the use of work email for personal use, your employees will stay on task more and avoid the distractions that come from sending and receiving personal emails during work hours.

Establish Systems for Email: If the email policy outlines appropriate content for an email sent during work hours over the company email system, it can also help establish systems to ensure all staff members are contributing to the brand or image of the company. Have each staff member use a template for email responses and set up signature lines that appear in all outgoing emails to further establish the company’s professionalism and image in the eyes of individuals who may receive email from your staff. Setting guidelines for content and use of email creates a single, comprehensive image of the company that helps keep the organization aligned with its mission.

An email policy is a document that provides your business with certain legal protections involving misuse of the email system by employees. Because it is a legal document, many businesses elect to have a lawyer draw up the email policy, or at the very least, review the policy before it is implemented within the organization. Having a lawyer review or prepare an email policy may seem like an unnecessary upfront cost, but has the potential to save you in legal fees in the future.

Click here to learn how Virtual IT Managers, Inc. can help you implement and maintain a company email policy with our Email Messaging and Archiving Solutions for your business in Miami, FL and surrounding cities.

Proactive, Managed IT Services Save Small and Medium Businesses Thousands of Dollars Yearly

Every dollar a small business spends needs to have an immediate and quantifiable return. This is especially true for critical services such as I.T. support. If you are one of the millions of small businesses that depend upon your technology to keep your business running, proactive Managed IT Services will save you money, improve your efficiencies and reduce your downtime.

The Solution

With the advent of new monitoring tools and the ability to remotely deliver help desk services to small businesses all over the world, Managed IT Services Providers have developed proactive maintenance plans for their clients that maximize their uptime and reduce I.T. costs over time. By implementing newly available automated processes, systems can be patched and updated overnight without the need for onsite visits, or disrupting an organization’s work day.

In addition, remote help desk tools and technology allow Managed IT Services Providers the ability to react immediately and assist users when they experience day-to-day problems, without forcing them to wait for an on-site service call.

Forward-thinking Managed IT Services Providers are also implementing proactive remote Network Monitoring tools and services, which evaluate the performance of systems 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and alert these Service Providers of potential issues before they become work-stopping problems for their clients.

The Details

Implementing and receiving the benefit of these solutions is painless for the Small Business Owner, as Managed IT Services Providers can begin delivering these cost-saving and efficiency-improving services soon after deploying specialized software agents on all managed equipment. These agents report device health, service pack and operating system, anti-virus and anti-spyware update information back to the Managed IT Services Provider’s monitoring systems, allowing real-time analysis and proactive management to occur.

Specialized software applications installed at the Managed IT Services Provider’s location also track all problems reported by their monitoring systems and end-users, and are used to document all steps initiated for resolution. These applications provide a ready knowledge-base of information which grows over time, allowing swift resolution for issues that have been previously documented.

The Benefits

Benefits from Managed IT Services enjoyed by Small Business Owners are many, and include increased operational efficiency, the ability to reduce and control their operating costs and gain access to Enterprise-level support. In addition, these Small Business Owners are now able to focus on running their businesses, and not their networks, and receive the peace of mind that comes with the knowledge their networks are being monitored 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Click here to learn how can help you benefit from Managed IT Services for your business in .

How to Save on IT Costs During a Recession

Here are some tips to Save on IT Costs during a recession:

Individuals become more frugal as the economy dips. Businesses who learn how to reduce their operating expenses are far more likely to survive economic downturns and recessions than those who continue to operate “business as usual”. For many business owners, information technology costs are expensive; here are some tips to save on IT costs during a recession:

Switch to VOIP Phone Lines: Are you still paying high phone bills to make sales calls, handle customer service, or hold teleconferences? This is an expense that almost all businesses can save simply by switching to VOIP lines instead of your landline or cellphone service. There are numerous options that we offer that can help you eliminate expensive long distance charges. Most businesses report a savings of around 60% when switching to telephone lines that operate through their internet connection.

Consider Switching to a Less Expensive ISP: Depending on your business needs, you may not require all of the features your current Internet Service Provider is offering. Why pay for something you don’t need? Check other ISP’s to see if you could be saving money.

Consider Dropping Your Merchant Account: Most businesses require a merchant account in order to accept credit cards as payments from their customers. With the increasing merchant account expenses, though, this is often a costly expense. You could still accept credit cards if you switch to an online payment processor, like Paypal, and avoid paying statement fees and monthly fees that are typical of regular merchant accounts. Online payment processors charge a higher fee per transaction than a standard merchant account, but depending on the volume of credit card transactions you may pay less overall than you do with your current merchant account. Run some numbers to see if the savings are significant enough to warrant a switch.

Use a Laptop: If reasonable, use a laptop instead of a full PC. A laptop consumes 90% less energy than the desktop version, and for many businesses, a laptop can do the job as well as a desktop.

Share Stuff: Do you have a computer and printer at every workstation in your office? Sell the individual printers and get a single printer that operates on the network. All computers in the office can print from the same printer and eliminate maintenance requirements on each individual printer, as well as reduce the energy required to power the printers. Think of other computer components that could be networked instead of used individually to further cut costs and set up a more efficient office.

Use Freelancers: When you discover you have a need for someone to complete a project that falls outside the scope of your current employees – instead of hiring another full time or part time employee, consider using a freelancer. Freelancers don’t require office space, do not receive the employee benefits you provide to your current staff, and can be hired on a per-project basis instead of placed on salary.

Downsize Your IT Department or Re-evaluate Your Current Outsourced IT Service: Consider using a flat rate IT support service rather than maintaining a full IT department on payroll, or maintaining a reactive outsourced IT service whose monthly costs are unpredictable. Flat rate IT service providers allow you to budget for and reduce your monthly and overall costs, increase your profits and act as your virtual IT department so you can focus on running your business and not the technology that supports it.

Click here to learn how Virtual IT Managers, Inc. can help you save on IT costs with our IT Assesment and Planning Services for your business in Miami, FL and surrounding cities.

Do You Make These Mistakes With One Of Your Company’s Most Valuable Assets?

An Important Message To Business Owners In The Miami-Dade Area
Who Are Concerned About Keeping Their Company’s Critical and Confidential Data Secure From Loss, Corruption, or Theft

If you are a small business owner with 5 or more PCs that is concerned about keeping your computer network and data safe from an ever-growing number of threats such as viruses, hackers, spam, spyware, system crashes, hardware failure, data loss, and even employee sabotage – then it’s extremely important that you get and read our new special report:

“What Every Small Business Owner Must Know About Protecting And Preserving Their Company’s Critical Data And Computer Systems”

This report will outline in plain, non-technical English common mistakes that many small business owners make with their computer network that cost them thousands in lost sales, productivity, and computer repair bills, as well as an easy, proven way to reduce or completely eliminate the financial expense and frustration of these problems.

This report will also discuss a new service that is helping thousands of small business owners get more speed, better performance, and life out of their existing technology investments while dramatically lowering the number of frustrations most businesses experience with their computer network.

For a limited time, copies of this exclusive report will be made available for free on our web site:

www.virtualitmanagers.com/protect

Free Windows Operating System Support Tools

Whether you are an automotive mechanic or a top IT professional, you need to have the right tools for the job. Unlike an automotive mechanic however, you don’t have to spend tens of thousands of your hard earned dollars on the tools you need. These basic Windows Operating System Support Tools tools you can use for IT and PC support duties are free to download from CNET.com.

Free Windows Operating System Support Tools

HwiNFO32

One of the first things you need to determine in any type of support operation is what the machine you will be working on is made of. HwiNFO32 is a hardware recognition utility that will provide you with all the specs and information you need, and then some; from what type of CPU it has to hardware performance parameters.

Ccleaner

A very common support tasks is cleaning the system of unused files and invalid registry entries, providing for more available disk space and faster overall performance. Cclneaner will do an excellent job at that as well as totally cleaning out the browser history and even uninstalling applications.

Recuva

Often times you will be in a situation where you need to recover lost or deleted files. Recuva was developed for just that purpose. It has a simple to use wizard type interface and can restore all types of files from simple text documents to videos, and everything else in between. You can restore files from removable disks and thumb drives as well as restore files that were deleted by viruses and crashes.

Defraggler

When a computer system is running slow a disk defragmentation tool should help speed things up quite a bit. When a computer file is created it is broken up into pieces and spread out throughout the systems hard drive. When the file needs to be retrieved it needs to be pieced back together. Defraggler will basically line up all the pieces together making the system perform better. It has an easy to use interface that allows you to pick and chose either various files and folders to defragment or the entire drive. You are also allowed to determine where on the drive you would like to store particular files, as well as scheduling the procedures to take place in the background as it can take quite some time to perform.

7-Zip

Many support tasks will require the use of compressed or “zip” files. Compressing the files allows them to be transferred more rapidly and take up less space. 7-Zip will provide no nonsense no frills compression and decompression capability that should suit the needs of almost everyone.

FileZilla

The necessity to transfer files to or from an FTP site or server will undoubtedly arise at some point. File transfer protocol has become the staple method of delivering patches, drivers and hot fixes. Filezilla enables you to perform these tasks with ease.

Almost everyone will find themselves tasked with some sort of computer problem. For the IT support professionals or just the average do it yourselfers there are some tools you just can’t do without, and some cases they just happen to be free. Make use of these free Windows Operating System Support Tools to ease your day-to-day computer issues and keep your systems running efficiently.

Have a PC or network problem you can’t fix? Click here to learn how Virtual IT Managers, Inc. can quickly respond to, and help solve your computer problems with our Reactive Response and PC Repair Services for your business in Miami, FL and surrounding cities.