Executive IT Insights: Navigating Business, Tech, and Security

Any break in the standard flow of a business can result in severe financial losses. Where do these losses stem from? One of the most expensive business interruptions is IT or system downtime. What is system downtime? It's when a technological "glitch" shuts down production. For healthcare companies, it's when servers shut down and your electronic health records become unavailable. No appointment scheduling. No access to patient records. No processing of payments.

There are some estimates that downtime costs range from $427 per minute for small businesses to as high as $9,000 for large enterprises.

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Change management models are a crucial part of any organization. Healthcare settings in particular are known to be resistant to change and have a lot on the line when it comes to implementation. In order to stay competitive, it is important to know how best to implement change management strategies that will keep your organization running smoothly and efficiently. There are many different models for change management frameworks, but which ones work the best for healthcare?

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From the right tools to adequate staffing, customer service can turn out to be an expensive venture for businesses of all shapes and sizes. Most of the expenses incurred come from in-house teams, usually those working in a call-center. If customers get off of the phone with your in-house team and still don't have a resolution to their issue, that can also be seen as both time and money wasted. This is especially true if the customer decides to forego your business thanks to that particular experience.

According to Hannah Steiman of Peak Support, there are a few ways in which in-house customer service can become costly:

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With continued growth in computer and hand-held device use in the lives of many brings increasing technical questions and problems that arise. And so, the field of supporting these systems grows along with it, which brings business opportunities for entrepreneurs, and employment opportunities for support personnel.

But there are different types of support needs accompanied by varying required responsibilities and skills. The following are the differences between, and skills required for, three common areas of support: Help Desk, Technical Support, and Desktop/Deskside Support.

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Help desks are typically grouped according to their form of deployment, the size of a client's business and whether the software's source code is accessible and easy to alter. When searching for the perfect help desk, you must take these elements into consideration. The following is an explanation of the five main types of help desk examples currently on the market:

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When it comes to cloud computing, Service Level Agreements (SLAs) act as both the structure and warranty of the terms of the relationship between the consumer and provider. SLAs that are tailored toward services in the cloud often include information that differs from other agreements in similar industries.

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What specifically needs to be included in a service level agreement? Which aspects are described in an SLA? In this post, we explain the 6 common elements of a service contract.

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It is no secret that in the digital age, convenience and instant gratification are king. Convenience and speed are evident everywhere from cloud servers to text message jargon. Everything is designed and cultivated to be as quick as possible. But perhaps some things are meant to happen just a little bit slower.

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Configuration Management, or Software Configuration Management, is the tracking and controlling of software changes in a system. Its purpose is to ensure consistency in performance, functionality, and design. In many ways, configuration management is analogous to the architectural framework of a house that sets the tone for the actual materials, such as lumber and windows. In this case, software configuration would be the framework that is intertwined with tools such as cloud computing and other forms of configuration management database, or CMDB for short.

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