SCW Blog

From its very beginnings, technology’s purpose has been to advance and supplement our capabilities. Today, there are examples of tech fulfilling that role in everything from agriculture to manufacturing and everything in between. The advancement of 3D-printing is just one of the many, many ways that this trend of technology simplifying our basic needs has recently shown its value. Let’s discuss how the development of 3D-printed food could benefit the human race in various ways.

The Federal Trade Commission has developed their Safeguards Rule for one purpose: To set up a guideline on how to interact, store, and use customer information. The FTC enacted the Rule in 2003, but it was heavily amended in 2021 to ensure that it keeps up with the technology used by businesses today. It outlines the policies and procedures that all covered companies need to enact.

Have you ever left your laptop open on a table or a desk and return to see that your cat is draped across the keyboard? It may seem like a cute anecdote, but the truth is that while having pets enhances our lives, they can be a problem for your technology. In fact, some studies put the repair/replace bill of pet-induced technology problems at around $3 billion annually. In this week’s blog, we discuss how to protect your computer from your four-legged friends. 

There are a huge number of apps available on the various app stores—3.5 million and 1.6 million on the Google Play store and Apple’s App Store, respectively—and, while most of them are sufficiently secure to use, many of them aren’t. It can be hard to tell the difference between the two at times, so it is important that you and your team are protecting your business however you can. Let’s discuss the topic of security, as it pertains to mobile app stores, and why the issues have transcended security.

Technology has done some incredible things, especially in the past couple of decades, so it’s wild to imagine that someday, innovative new tools like ChatGPT will no longer be as cutting-edge as they might seem today. The reason is simple: most technologies today were once world-shattering and innovative, but with time they have become normalized.

Wearable technology is all over the place in your office, whether you realize it or not. Consider how many of your employees wear smartwatches or health trackers. All of these devices tend to enrich the lives of those who use them, but they can quickly become network security risks if you aren’t prepared to handle them on your company network. Let’s go over what you need to consider to protect your business from wearable technology.

Make no mistake, you want your business to grow. There is no better sign that you are resonating with customers and providing the value you set out to deliver. Unfortunately, for a lot of companies, they simply aren’t prepared when their product or service takes off and it ends up ruining what could be a very good thing. Today, we’ll take a look at three actions you can take to keep your business humming along when it sees extraordinary growth. 

The sales process is an integral part of every business. How to get your products and services in front of prospective customers is the big mystery that every business has to solve. Technology can really help improve your business’ sales process. Today, we will look at a couple of technologies that work wonders to help your sales team be more effective. 

One thing that will always be useful in business and in life is the ability to think critically. You might find that it’s even more helpful when considering decisions related to your IT infrastructure, too. Let’s go over how you can foster these skills within yourself and your employees.

When people talk about the growth of technology in business, no small part of that is what the Internet of Things makes possible. From cost control, to automated scheduling, to helping build operational efficiency, the IoT can present a lot of interesting benefits for a business if you strategically implement systems designed to use the data created by smart devices. Let’s take a look at some of the ways IoT works for small businesses.

Smart devices are all the rage in today’s consumer-based market. People love to get their hands on devices that can help them better track and manage their lives. There are two factors that play into how these devices can be brought into a professional work environment, though, and they are security and reliability.

“Nice guys finish last.” It’s not a new idea—in fact, it’s paraphrased from a quote teasing the 1946 New York Giants for their last-place finish in their league. In business, it’s become a cliche all its own…but does the cliche actually have anything supporting it?

As it turns out, it doesn’t.

Entrepreneurship is extremely frightening to a lot of people, and that’s probably why a lot of people make the choice to work for others. If you think about it, a lot can go wrong; a lot more than can go right. Today, we thought we’d highlight how business owners are able to get through all of the problems to forge ahead and create successful companies.

Look, no one has perfect spelling or grammar, which is why autocorrect as a feature exists in text-based applications. That said, it can often provide you with inaccurate or context-clueless suggestions, leading to much confusion and frustration. Let’s take a look at how you can make autocorrect work better for you, or if you are just sick of it altogether, disable it.

Databases are important in the business setting, and most organizations can’t even function without them in some capacity. A database management system can help businesses manage their databases in an efficient way. We’d like to discuss some of the ways that a DBMS can help a business manage its computing resources.

The more you seek to understand your business, the better you are going to be able to run it efficiently. No, this was not Confucius, although it sounds similar to something he would get behind. The more efficient a business becomes the less it will spend. How does this work? Today, we’ll unpack what it takes to cut your costs without hurting your business. 

For every technology that we use daily, there was once a time when it was brand-spanking-new. Think about when the Internet first became commonplace. People had questions that were seemingly endless, and even computers and electricity were once novel concepts. Let’s think about some more modern inventions that might someday be just as commonplace as some of the tools we use in our daily lives.

The technology your business uses can be viewed as a mandatory expense nowadays since so much of your business is tied to its functionality. The more IT costs rise, however, the less small and mid-sized businesses like ours can do with our IT budgets. These costs are affecting the way we think about our technology and you are probably in the same boat. Today, we will go through a few ways the rising costs of organizational technology and technology support solutions impact businesses like yours.

Since the pandemic began, the semiconductor industry has been reeling, further placing strain on the technology industry. To aid in its recovery, the United States Congress passed legislation to fund the manufacturing of semiconductors. The CHIPS Act, thought to be in response to both the semiconductor shortage and China’s increasing economic strength, could be a major player in technology production.

Have you ever accidentally seen a black box with a blinking cursor and a bunch of nonsense populate on the screen? This is the command prompt, and it can be a useful tool for IT administrators to handle certain tasks or situations, although you might not necessarily use it much yourself. Still, it’s an interesting function of your operating system, so we wanted to discuss it a bit with today’s blog.