Washington Works Blog

If you are on the purchasing end of software, you know it can be pretty expensive and it can cost just as much or more to maintain over its lifecycle. You know what is more expensive? Not having a plan for either thing. This month, we thought we would discuss some topics that can help you not waste money on technology. 

By now you’ve heard of the Internet of Things. It consists of all of the Internet-connected devices found on a given network. Different types of businesses have different ways that they can use the IoT. This month, we thought we would discuss the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and the ways modern manufacturers use it to make big changes to their businesses.

Unfortunately, technology is just a tool. It can do so much for your business, but there are times when your technology is getting older and it stymies the amount that you can produce. This degradation can have a stark effect on your organizational productivity from downtime, cost, and more. Let’s look at how you can identify variables that tell when your technology has to be replaced.

While extremely useful, there are plenty of potential frustrations when using technology for your business. From extended downtime from broken technology to hackers trying to steal your data to tools that don’t really fit the specific needs of your business: managing a lot of technology can be difficult. In this blog, we are set to discuss three things you should focus on to get out in front of potential technology problems.

Every business depends on some type of software, but some businesses seem to have an application for every single thing and it can be too much for employees or administrators to manage. So the question has to be asked: What is the right amount of software for your business? Today, we’ll discuss the types of software every business needs and how to determine what you need. 

It’s no secret that automation is one of the major trends that most businesses have tried to incorporate into their business plans, most with some middling success. The problem becomes that many businesses don’t really have a strategy for building out automated tools for their business, so they may not be able to take advantage of the benefits automation can bring. 

Threats are everywhere in business today. You can quite literally be sitting at your desk actively working in your email and be exposed to multiple scams. With this revelation, it is essential that every organization takes the steps necessary to secure themselves against the immense amount of threats that could put their network and infrastructure at risk, and do so without making it difficult on their staff. Let’s dig into what that takes in this month’s newsletter.

If your business is fortunate enough to make it through the first stage and is looking to open a brand new facility or add onto its current setup, you will need to figure out how you are going to use your technology. This can be a challenge. 

Technology is a big part of doing business for a lot of organizations. One issue that comes into play is that managing that technology can get a little much for a small organization or one that doesn’t actively have some type of plan of how to organize their IT in a way that can keep that technology from being a risk or a problem. This month, we’ll take a look at a couple things that can be done to clean up your IT and make it be more of a benefit to your organization.

The Internet is used for a great many things in business nowadays, but some may not realize just how much Internet speeds have changed over time. This week, we thought we would take a brief look at the evolution of Internet speeds and what today’s speeds allow businesses to do. 

Software makes business run: that is an undeniable statement. From the operations software that allows your business to manage and pay its people to the CRM that provides a pathway to communicate efficiently with customers, to all of the applications that it takes to conduct business in earnest, software plays a crucial role in your business’ success. 

Small businesses have a lot to worry about in terms of technology, but one of the things that often gets overlooked is network security. Some small businesses feel that they are too small to be considered a viable target for hackers, but they are wrong; all businesses have data valuable for hackers in some form.

We talk a lot about different types of technology, securing your technology and your accounts, and a lot of other technology-related issues on this blog, but because of the generalities of whatever technology (or strategy) we’ve chosen to write about that day, we never confront the thing that is most important to a business: How does any technology fit into what we do here? What value do we get from any type of technology? Today, we thought we’d talk a little bit about what you need to do to find the right technology for your business and how to come up with those decisions. 

While there are some aspects of business technology that are quite simple, there are other parts that are complicated and difficult to understand, even for experienced users. In this month’s newsletter, we want to go over how you can keep the complexity of your IT to a minimum so that you have as few headaches as possible.

Do your employees have a hard time with the technology that you’ve provided them? Are your digitization efforts lagging behind? Are the systems your business is using coming up on their end of support date? Old technology can cause major problems for a business. In this week’s blog, we go through some of the signs that you may need to upgrade your business’ technology.

The Internet of Things, or IoT, has grown to over 14 billion connected devices as of this year, and this number is expected to exceed 20 billion devices by the end of 2026. With such a shocking number of devices, you might wonder what types of devices are out there and what they mean for your business. Let’s look at the IoT and what you need to know to keep it at the top of your mind this upcoming year.

Organizations come in all sizes and with it, there are all different ways of conducting business. Some companies choose to spend more time and money on their organization’s IT than others do. This month, we thought we would briefly go through four different tiers of technology investment and what they mean for your business. 

Today’s business takes effort that extends beyond traditional ways of doing things, and technology is at the center of these efforts. One of the avenues that businesses are using right now to boost productivity is by allowing workers to use the mobility they use in their everyday life. Today, we’ll discuss how added mobility can help bring surprising boosts of productivity.

For years, IT has been at the forefront of business administration, productivity, communications, and many other parts of an organization's efficient operations. For the growing business it can be rather difficult to know where to invest your capital so that you can get the best ROI or the most value out of your IT investments. Let’s take a look at how the growing business can use their earmarked capital to improve their business.

Businesses often need to add and remove technology to fit their needs, and most of the time these actions make a marked difference in the way that their organizations are able to do things. One problem you may have is with the identification of the business processes that would be aided by technology investment. Today, we’ll briefly discuss how to best identify your business’ IT goals.