GUEST CONTRIBUTORS

• Foresight Is 2020: Predictions For The Coming Year

  January brings with it new hope and new energy, but before you chart a course for the year, it’s always good to see which way the winds are blowing.

• How To: Naming Conventions For Documentation

  Consistent naming conventions are crucial to getting the most out of your documentation. With strong naming conventions, you’ll be able to find documents efficiently, avoid creating duplicate documents, and easily understand the contents of a document without having to click into it. It’s important to get naming conventions correct early on to avoid having to go back and update a bunch of documents later. Remember, naming conventions are all about utility; once the system is learned, anybody should be able to interpret the document name accurately.

• How To Develop A Team That Can Self Serve

  When your team is operating like a finely-tuned machine, with little intervention on your part, you’re positioned for growth. Your leadership team - from the CEO down to the senior techs - have more time to focus on growth activities when the rest of the team is running itself. But it’s easier to say than to do, so let’s go over a few pointers on how to get your team to a point where they self-serve.

• Top Metrics For MSPs In 2020

  The New Year is arguably an arbitrary dividing point for making personal resolutions, but for a business whose financial year ends and begins at this point, there’s a strong rationale for setting goals and implementing positive changes. Accurate year-over-year business performance comparison is then possible, giving an apples-to-apples look at whether the changes you made for 2020 worked for you. I can’t tell you what your business goals for the New Year should be, but what I can do is highlight some useful metrics that will help pinpoint problem areas and measure improvement. Here they are, logically categorized, and offered for your benefit.

• Cybersecurity Predictions For 2020: What Our Experts Have To Say

  As the year draws to a close, the cybersecurity analysts at Webroot and Carbonite pull out their crystal balls to make their predictions for the year ahead.  Our experts predict many of the trends they’ve been tracking throughout the year—well-researched attacks, RDP compromise, and the importance of user education—will continue into the New Year. But they’ll be affected by new industry developments such as impending privacy regulations, AI-enabled attacks, and attacks targeting developing nations. 

FEATURED SUPPLIERS

• RSPA

  RSPA stands for Retail Solutions Providers Association. We are the only association dedicated to the retail technology industry.

   

• Panduit

  Panduit is a world leader that engineers flexible, end-to-end electrical and network connectivity physical infrastructure solutions that help businesses stay connected in a global world. Our high-performance products improve productivity and offer a lower total cost of ownership to create a competitive business advantage.

• CompTIA

  CompTIA is the voice of the world's information technology (IT) industry.

• The ASCII Group

  The ASCII Group is a vibrant community of independent MSPs, VARS and solution providers in North America. The organization offers members leveraged purchasing programs, education and training, knowledge sharing among peers, discounts on business services, and more. Founded in 1984 by Alan Weinberger, ASCII is the oldest and largest group of independent IT solution providers, integrators and VARS in the world.

• Taylor Business Group

  Taylor Business Group is an executive coaching and peer group firm that focuses on IT Solution Providers and Copier Dealers. Founded in 2001, Taylor has brought efficiencies and higher profits to IT Solution Providers through a focused effort in delivering best practices to the Service Provider and Copier Dealer's service, sales and administrative functions.

• Shift4 Payments

  Shift4 Payments is a leading national provider of touch-screen point of sale (POS) systems and payment processing services. As pioneers of the “as a service” model, Shift4 Payments offers an unprecedented “free” POS program that allows the company’s sales partners to offer a full-featured POS system with no up-front costs.