With all the investments that you have on yourself your team, it’s important to note that any of your our in danger of getting lost during these times.
Protect you and your team with these simple nine (9) essential tips to get you on board with Cyber Security:
• Share information • Make it personal • Lead by example • Implement an easy to understand policy • Drill it from the start • Make it regular • Start with the basics • Offer rewards • Run drills
Make things happen with your team and learn more about how you can improve together.
In our 16 years of operating, we have been helping dentists and their many practices to grow.
We have been fortunate enough to gain the support of the dental community over the years and trusted as the leading provider of phone systems for dentists. This has all been done through word of mouth and recommendations amongst peers, of our team and our service.
To help you (hopefully you’re a dentist reading this!) better understand why practice principles choose iceConnect, this blog post will break down what these phone systems exactly do and why it can enhance a practice’s marketing strategy.
Phone Systems
What are they?
Whether you own/run one or multiple sites, your practices can operate under a single telephone system that connects all locations and every single individual employee’s line.
Features include;
Silently listening into phone calls
Listening back on recorded phone calls
Taking office calls from any location with the use of an app
Creating on-hold menu options
Easily adding/removing new lines for employees
Transferring calls in and out of office easily
How can the phones boost productivity in my practice?
The phones run on a system that constantly records and monitors all activity, which is then compiled into statistical and analytical reports.
Available on a monthly, weekly or daily basis – as often as you choose, these reports offer crucial insights into how your interaction with your patients is impacting on business progression. They can provide answers to questions that could help advance areas of your business you didn’t know needed improvement.
KPIs We Provide For Dentists
Number of abandoned calls
Number of new patient vs. existing patient calls
Average time to answer a call
Average time spent talking to patients
Daily list of abandoned calls so they can be called back
With all this information, you can begin to see where you could improve and any changes you can start making today e.g. making sure staff answer every single call.
Based on the information you find, the marketing methods you use can be tailored easier to your existing patients or new patients because now you know their behaviours and habits.
How lovely. Lisa in accounts has a brand new puppy.
It’s taking over her life. There are photos on her desk.
It’s all she seems to talk about. Hey – she even changed her password to
include his name.
And suddenly that puppy has become a security risk to your
business.
Hackers are clever. They look at social media feeds, and build profiles of people based on what they share. You’d be surprised many people base their passwords on their pets or children’s names.
We’ve created a new video about this very subject. You need to watch it now.
There are many factors to consider when making the choice between hiring
an in-house tech team or a managed serviced provider (MSP). A managed service
provider is a company that manages client’s IT infrastructure and end-user
systems, remotely. Businesses usually
hire MSPs to provide them with a recurring, subscription-type service with
different support features based on their company needs.
By ‘support’, we mean the dedicated team in charge of your staff’s tech.
This is everything from physically installing hardware to email set-up,
software installation and virus damage control.
For small companies, MSPs might be more cost effective rather than an
in-house tech team. If you have few computers and your relationship or primary
mode of communication with your clients isn’t dependant on the smooth running
of your tech, it might be futile to fork out large salaries to technicians who
are hardly needed.
By choosing remote support you can select a plan that works for you.
This could be pay-as-you-go, monthly or yearly support with on-call assistance
– the flexibility of the conditions of your tech support are negotiable between
yourself and the company you choose.
An in-house technician might only have general knowledge and not always
know the best method to care of your staff’s tech needs. If you have a large
company however, with 50+ staff that require a tech guy on hand to deal with
minor issues e.g. email set-up, internet connectivity, it would be cheaper to
add a technician to the permanent team. MSPs have high hourly rates and can
charge more for call-outs. When you’re paying these rates for small problems
that happen frequently, you’ll begin to see which option is most
cost-efficient.
Managed service providers (which is what we are), house a full team of
technicians with a broad spectrum of specialist knowledge and skills. Where one
technician might still be learning a topic, another might thrive in it. An MSP
team is constantly learning about new software, systems, devices and completing
training courses in order to stay up-to-date with evolving technologies, to
deliver a comprehensive service to the large range of clients they cater to.
If it sounds like your company would be better off with an MSP – we are
one!
Our CEO is extremely accessible and loves talking to new clients – seeing
how we can best tailor our plethora of services to come up with a plan that works
best for you.
Give us a call or send an email and you’ll hear from him directly.
From the
tech team at iceConnect, to anyone sat at a desk, struggling to find the
document they minimised ten minutes ago, here are a few handy keyboard
shortcuts we deemed the most necessary to know.
Ctrl + ‘S’ =
Save document
Ctrl + ‘C’ =
Copy text
Ctrl + ‘V’ =
Paste text
Ctrl + ‘X’ =
Cut text
Ctrl + ‘Z’ =
Undo action
Ctrl + ‘Y’ =
Redo action
Ctrl + ‘B’ =
Make text bold
Ctrl + ‘I’
= Italics
Ctrl + ‘U’
= Underline text
Ctrl + F =
Find word
Shift + Arrow
keys = Highlight text
Windows key + ‘L’ = Lock computer
Windows key + comma = Peek at desktop
Windows key + ‘T’ = Look through apps on task bar
Windows key + arrow keys = Change window size
Windows key + ‘D’ = Minimises everything to show desktop and again to bring everything back up
Windows key + Shift + ‘S’ = Screenshot part of screen
Shift +
Windows key + Left & Right arrows = Move window to another monitor (multiple screens)
Shift + Windows key + Up & Down arrows = Minimise and close window
Alt + Tab =
Quickly switch between windows – helpful to find pop up windows
When starting a business, being able to track your growth accurately and protect your ideas and business plans is important. Ninety percent of all start-ups fail within the first year. You should optimise every cog in the machine that contributes to the smooth take off of your business and lands you in that tenth percentile.
Whatever
sector you find yourself in, it is highly unlikely you won’t require some sort
of IT or tech to get you started. As well as the standard smart phone and
emails, here are five IT essentials that will ensure any hiccups in the road,
won’t be because of the tech.
1. Computers (obviously)
You’ll need a devise to carry out basic business such as accessing the internet, emailing, compiling reports, etc.
While a phone is handy and can do nearly everything
a computer can, sometimes when doing real work you need a bigger screen and the
ability to type – so consider portability.
Will you need to access files and emails from
remote locations or on-the-go?
If your start-up hasn’t established offices and a
permanent working space with monitors and desktops, laptops and tablets are
key.
Consider a screen size that works for you. Do you carry bags that will fit larger
laptops? Do you need a bigger screen to see detailed images? What sort of job
do you have and what features do you require from the device? Are you in a
creative field and need touch screen or boosted graphics? Will any portable
device with Microsoft Office, suffice?
All to take into account when choosing your brand
and size.
As you’re presumably trying to spend money smartly,
you don’t have to go for the premium, high range products. Having said this
don’t cheap out and opt for unreliable tech with a short life span. Mid-range
if perfect for new companies. As you grow and learn what best suites the needs
of the business you may find changes with your devices need to be made or
replacements and upgrades. It will be the safe option as you haven’t spent a
small fortune on a laptop that you decide isn’t for you after a year and you
haven’t jeopardised your work with shoddy equipment.
2. Online Storage
More often than not, it is easier and more efficient
to store files and important information onto some sort of cloud. The
unpredictability of saving crucial documents onto physical devices – with an
array of scenarios in which you could lose or break them, is too risky. With
all the options on offer there’s no reason not to utilise online storage. It is
cost effective and saves physical space.
With apps and sites such as Dropbox, Google Drive
and iCloud files can be instantly backed up and accessed from anywhere with an
internet connection.
This eliminates the need to rummage through your
belongings for the correct USB and the most recent version of a file that
you’ve saved five times.
3. Security
With sensitive information and everything you use
to track your company’s operations, all stored on a tech device, imagine the
catastrophe when you lose it all to a silly virus.
Antivirus software is like an umbrella in the rain.
Even if you don’t have a start-up, protecting your device from a virus is just
good sense
4. Phone Systems
If your business is customer/client focused, a
primary method of communication with them can be via telephone. This can be a
tricky process to keep track of and analyse if you don’t have the correct
system in place to monitor it.
You mightn’t have ever thought to use your phone
line traffic to your advantage and determine key information about your
clientele, but in can prove extremely useful in your marketing strategy going
forward.
A comprehensive system can track the statistics and
figures of your phone lines and offer you reports and insights into how your
customer operates. With this information you can inform your staff and alter
your business operations to better cater to the needs of the customer. This
will help you grow and be seen as a reliable and professional contender in your
field of work.
5. Emails
While free emails are great for personal, every-day
use, consider investing in an email account provider. Having your company name
in the address ([email protected]) gives you the platform to come
across as more organised and professional when presented to customers.
Because we rely on email so much to run our businesses, it’s
our greatest tool (no matter how much you might sigh when you see how many
unread emails you have).
But because there’s so much activity in there. And you can
receive emails from anyone, it’s the most common way to try to breach your
business.
Hackers are targeting every business, every day. Using
clever automated tools.
In this new video we show you some of the common cyber
crimes that start in emails. And how to protect your business.
We’re iceConnect, looking after businesses in London. And we’re very much on your side. Let’s work together to keep the hackers out.
