eMazzanti Technologies | Technology Newsletter | Hoboken, NJ – New York, NY | March 2013

Where does your business find the IT expertise it needs?

Businesses that lack the staff IT expertise or time that a technology requires can outsource. A sea of techies will claim that their know-how is what you need; they’ll certainly take your money.

Many businesses choose to outsource IT expertise and support to a professional partner, such as a:

• Network consultant, reseller, or systems integrator
• Service provider, Internet service provider, or managed services provider

Any of these partners may offer cloud-based services. And many of them will save you money.

Interviewing multiple candidates will help. The following are five strategies that Cisco small business customers have used to find the right IT partner, and results they got.

1. Require High Business Intelligence

Funneling your IT partner options through the business value screen will quickly give you a manageable pool.

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VARs have a variety of perceptions about them. Some of these perceptions are right on. Some of them completely miss the mark. The truth is the right VAR can help most businesses more than they realize. Can the right VAR help you?

Technology is critical to run almost every business today, and in most cases, can offer both competitive and strategic value to your business. The problem is many businesses don’t think about their PCs, printers or servers as providing a competitive advantage or as strategic business tools. Even as a fundamental business tool, many think that there is little difference in the basic capabilities across the huge variety of technology devices on the market today. Having been in the industry for almost 20 years now, I can tell you that there are many differences worth noting when comparing computing products. I can also tell you that when used appropriately, there are both competitive and strategic advantages to be gained from technology.

This is where your local VAR steps in. They are experts in technology; it’s what they do. They can help you navigate the basic task of ensuring you get the right technology tools to support your business and then show you how to drive business success from that technology.

Consider these areas of expertise and guidance VARs can offer and think about how they could help your business:

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Technology can go a long way in helping your business stay competitive, meet customer expectations and improve operational efficiencies. But most small businesses simply don’t have the resources to evaluate technologies and aren’t sure where to find the right technology partner. That’s where a value-added reseller can help.

A VAR enhances an existing product, such as hardware, with additional features, such as software, and then sells it as an integrated package often tailored for specific industries. VARs add further value to the products they sell through consultation and design, training, implementation, and ongoing service and support.

The right VAR can serve as a small business’s IT advisor and help it deploy the same technologies that larger companies use, such as CRM software and IP communications. You can then use those tools to enhance customer experience–a key step in growing customer loyalty and the bottom line.

A VAR can also offer the following benefits:

• One-stop shopping. A single VAR can provide an integrated solution involving technologies from one or more vendors, as well as a single point of contact for both deployment and problem resolution.
• Broad expertise. A VAR can provide you with expertise in a variety of technologies.
• The big picture about small business. Many VARs cater to small businesses and are small businesses themselves. They’re positioned to understand your challenges and to deliver a solution that’ll fit your business now and in the future.

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When you think about protecting your business from security risks, what comes to mind? Most likely, you’re not thinking about your office printers. But you should.

Printers found in many businesses these days do more than just print. Many of them also scan, copy, fax and receive print jobs through a network connection. Like a computer, printers are equipped with processors, hard drives and operating systems—and are thus susceptible to the same threats that commonly plague PCs.

Watch out for these threats

There are many different ways your printer might be compromisin
g the security of your business. Here are several threats you should make sure you’re defending against:

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