We understand that for many Small Businesses, IT is something that you just need to work. But having a full-time in-house IT support department is too expensive.
We can help you with local, friendly and reliable IT support managing your IT.
We can be on-site, remote or a mix of the two, whichever works best for you and your business.
And if you decide to take on in-house IT support, we can ensure a seamless and smooth transition and handover so you don’t need to worry about starting from scratch.
IT Support for Very Small Businesses
It may be that you only need occasional IT support, when something goes wrong for example. We can accommodate IT support for very small businesses and work from home users with our flexible support plans.
Support can be offer remotely or on site to suit your needs. We can offer IT advice for when you purchase new IT equipment, end user support and we can offer training to help you make your business flourish.
Just because your small…
It doesn’t mean your IT needs are any less important or require less technical support than a big business.
You may be a sole trader or a small team of workers, but you still need you IT to work.
We can support you whatever your size.
#WeCanHelp
We can provide all the technical knowhow you need you keep your business running, without the cost of a full time in-house IT person.
Regulation EU 2016/679, known as the GDPR or The Data Protection Act 2018 in the UK relates to the use of individuals personally identifiable information.
What is Personally Identifiable Information?
Any information that can be used to identify an individual directly or indirectly is personally identifiable information and so covered under the GDPR.
Common types of Personally Identifiable Information are;
Names
Email Address (personal ones and business ones if they identify the individual such as joe.blogs@company.com)
Address
Unique Reference Numbers
Registration Plates
Photos
Phone Numbers
Some types of Personally Identifiable Information have a special category status, these include things like;
Health Information
Bio-metric Information
Sexual information
Religious Information
If you handle any of the special category information, you need to provide additional levels of security and have explicit consent from the data subject to process it.
Do I handle Personally Identifiable Information?
If you have any of the following, it’s likely that you are handling Personally Identifiable Information;
Employee Information
Customer Information
Prospects Information
Suppliers Information
What do I have to do to be compliant?
You need to make sure you are registered with the ICO as being compliant to handle Personally Identifiable Information.
You need to make sure you know how your organisation is processing information under the GDPR, where is it coming from, how is it being used, who has access to it, where does it go, how long do you hold it for?
You need a Privacy Policy to document how your are managing the security of the information you have, in this you need to identify the lawful basis for processing the information, and keep records of how you have come to the lawful basis, how you have processed information, and how you have ensured the security of the information.
You need a Privacy Notice to notify the individuals who’s information you have, about how you have obtained that information, how you’re going to use it, your lawful basis for using it, how you’re going to protect it and how they can submit requests to update or prevent processing on it.
You also need a means of monitoring your information store, either paper based or digital, that can identify when a breach happens. A breach could be as simple as accidentally deleting information or it could be as serious as someone unauthorised getting access to the information.
Responding to individual requests
Individuals have various rights to their data depending on your lawful basis for processing. You are required to respond to these requests in 30 days, and without any fee. You must provide any information in an easy to access format, and explain any technical terms used.
Responding to individual requests is something you should have a documented process for, this will save you time and trouble if and when you receive any requests, and will help keep you compliant with the GDPR.
#WeCanHelp
There’s a lot of work that needs to be done getting your organisation GDPR compliant, we can take the burden off you and create the policies, documentation and processes you need to make sure your organisation is compliant.
We can continue to support you by processing your incoming user requests and monitoring your processes to make sure your organisation remains GDPR compliant.
General Data Protection Regulations
Data Protection Act 2018
The GDPR UK implementation and the UK Data Protection Act 2018 govern how organisations can process personally identifying information.
If your organisation needs to process personal information, it needs to be registered on the ICO database, and have a Data Protection Policy in place detailing the use of personal information.
Personal Information is any information that can identify an individual, such as employee names, customer id’s or CCTV footage.
If you need help assessing your GDPR compliance, contact us immediately for a GDPR review.
On many platforms the ability to check-in or tag a business is expected by users, and if your business is not already officially listed it could get added unofficially, then you have very little control over what gets posted to that unofficial page.
Just because you don’t own your geo-location data doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
Marketing Opportunity
Not having your business listed on search engines and maps means you’re missing out on potential clients, and missing the chance to advertise your special offers to new people.
Many potential customers will search using services like Google maps and Bing Maps without realising it, so not being correctly listed could mean you’re missing out on business.
Multiple Services
Keeping multiple location services and maps up-to-date with your business can become a nightmare, missing an important update out from one service could impact on your potential new customers. Some services will scrape in information from other sources to try to present a complete picture of your business, if you’re not in control of all of that information, the information potential customers are seeing could be wrong.
#WeCanHelp
We can help you manage your online locations. We can make sure you appear correctly and consistently, and listed on all the major mapping services and checking-in apps. We can keep all your services up-to-date with images, locations, business contact details and social media links.
We understand that sometimes you need to temporarily expand your in-house IT Support. It might be to assist in delivering a project on time, for additional knowledge, or simply to cover for a period of time.
IT Management for SME’s without in-house IT Support
We can take on the management of your IT department if it’s an existing role or if you’re just setting up your first in-house IT department and want an experienced Manager in charge while the department is established.
IT Support for SME’s with in-house IT Support
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We can work alongside your existing support to boost your team just when you need it, assisting or taking over roles as needed and providing additional experience from end user support to full network management.
Cover for IT leave
If you need temporary cover for your in-house IT support team, we can help. It may be for maternity, paternity, medical or holiday leave, we can plan to shadow your existing IT support so we’re prepared to take over the role for as long as required.
Emergency Support
Sometimes you don’t know you’re going to need to cover a position until the last minute. Don’t worry! We have immense experience in running busy IT departments and can step in to cover any IT roll you need, for as long as you need it.
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We can offer fixable, additional IT assistance to backup your IT department for the times you need it. Adding to their knowledge base and being an extra set of hands.
Offering WiFi to customers or clients is a great way to generate good will. If you serve clients at your premises, not offering WiFi access (especially if mobile data is poor in the area) could be the difference between a new client visiting you or your competitor down the road.
Free or Paid?
Offering Paid WiFi takes a lot of the responsibility out of your hands, the WiFi provider will take care of many of the WiFi provisions. However, provider free WiFi via your own broadband could offer more options, both in terms of capturing marketing information and of presenting your services via a logon page.
Free WiFi
It’s so ubiquitous that being out away from your known networks, people expect to be able to get onto a WiFi connection. There are a number of companies that will supply WiFi via pay-per-go service providers, and more still that offer free WiFi access to their customers. As a business, choosing to open up your broadband internet connection to offer WiFi to your customers makes sense, it gives you the opportunity to have a landing page to advertise to your clients, the possibility to collect marketing information such as name and emails, and good will from your customers who know you offer WiFi access. But there are obvious security concerns that need taking care of, such as securing access to your business computers, making sure your business has priority access over clients, and making sure your clients are not using your network connection for illegal purposes.
As a user, accessing free WiFi is very tempting, but is it secure? You need to know that your connection is not being snooped upon or changed without your knowing.
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We can assess your needs and provide you with the client WiFi access that suits your business model.
Having a static webpage reminiscent of the 1990’s is no longer enough. You need a dynamic webpage that resizes and functions on a wide range of devices, from small smartphone screens to wide screen TV’s, your website needs to look good.
Blogging
Many websites are now based on blogging infrastructures, allowing site managers to quickly post new updates to their website without the need to worry about formatting and layouts.
Social Media
Your dynamic website also needs to tie in and communicate with your social media platforms, sending updates and being the landing point for visitors.
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We can help you design your website presence, from logos and graphics, to full content and online selling platforms.
From a home WiFi router to a multi-office business WiFi deployment, WiFi has become synonymous with modern computing networks, and is and expected service for many users. But how can you keep your WiFi running at full speed?
WiFi Maintenance
Maintaining your WiFi is essential to keeping a reliable responsive WiFi network. With multiple devices trying to connect to your WiFi access point, and multiple access points interfering on the same frequency, it’s easy to see how a poorly maintained WiFi can soon become clogged up.
Business WiFi
Having WiFi access in your office frees up your users from being tied to a particular location, not having to use a network cable means they are more flexible in where they work and what devices they can use. It is the easiest way to expand the capacity of a network without having to run new cables around the walls and floors.
#WeCanHelp
We offer a wide range of WiFi related services, we can perform WiFi security tests to make sure your network is safe from hackers, WiFi performance reviews to make sure your WiFi is operating at its best performance, Home WiFi reviews to check your home WiFi is speedy and secure, WiFi access services so you can provide WiFi to staff and clients in a secure way and WiFi deployment, identifying the best location for WiFi access points and eliminating WiFi dead zones.
Using a VPN to connect to your network allows you to extend your private LAN network out to users who could be anywhere in the world. The VPN is a secure encrypted connection between a remote device and your firewall, allowing the remote user to access network resources such as shared files, printers, email etc.
Working from home securely
Having a secure VPN gives you the opportunity to work from home with more than just email or remote desktop access. A secure VPN can give you full access to your company network just as if you were sitting in the office, with connections to all your office network facilities.
Using VPN for private browsing
There may be some situations where local network policy restricts privacy. While there are obviously legal issues that need to be taken into account, using a VPN could be a technical means to getting around the lack of privacy.
We can help you or your company plan and roll out secure VPN’s for your remote staff, allowing secure and protected access to your network services from a range of devices and locations, allowing your staff to work when they can’t physically get access to the office.
“The Cloud” is one of the buzz words that has been around for the past few years. People are often doing things “in the cloud” and you’ve probably been told to copy your data “to the cloud” but what exactly are they talking about?
Back in the early days of inter-connected networks, before the ‘internet’ was coined, it was good practice to have a network diagram of your network of computers. As these were quite specialised and expensive areas of computing, the only places to have networked computers were universities, some research laboratories and big companies.
On the wall in the IT room would be a big diagram showing how everything connected together, how each terminal was connected to the mainframe, and how your network was connected to any other network (if, indeed, it was) – this would have been over leased telephone lines that were owned by the telephone company and so their workings were unknown to the IT technicians, they just knew that data went in, traversed somehow, then came out the other end, and so a picture of a cloud was used to show this ‘something somewhere’. Four decades later, some marketing team saw the cloud icon on a network diagram, and ‘The cloud’ was coined.
What can The Cloud do?
The best way to think about The Cloud in terms of what it can do, is to replace ‘The Cloud’ with ‘Someone else’s much bigger and more powerful computer’
Suddenly it’s not quite as fluffy and safe, so you’re going to use caution, right? Well you should because, as with all areas of life, there are unscrupulous people out there trying to make money from you any way they can, legally and illegally.
When using any service that is cloud based, be it to backup your photos, play games or chat with friends, always be aware of just who is receiving, processing, logging, viewing, saving and distributing YOUR data.
#WeCanHelp
Using ‘The Cloud’ has revolutionised the use of the internet, making smartphones much more usable, letting businesses spread their workloads and securing precious data. But always do research first, and use reputable providers.
We can help you identify if, where and how you are using The Cloud at the moment, we can design and implement secure and reliable services that meet your needs and we can help you check just who is able to get to your data.
Most people know about social media. In fact last year it was reported that 81% of people will turn to their favourite social media platform to check out a new business before searching for a website for them.
It’s expected by your customers to be able to see information about your business, get contact and opening details, directions and reviews from their social media platform of choice, so not being on social media could be as detrimental as not being on the internet at all.
People Being Social
Social media may be a big platform for business, but it started out and is powered by individual users.
There are some individuals who are out to con unsuspecting users, using any means the can. As with all situations, you need to be weary and on your guard. Unless you can totally and utterly confirm the authenticity of and message or link, treat it with suspicion.
Which Platform is best?
There are a few main platforms that are popular, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat. Each one is successful because it appeals to a different audience and has different capabilities.
For a business, you should look at covering two or more platforms to be able to engage potential clients, and as a user you’re likely to be on several platforms depending on your preferences, what your friends and family use and what features you want to make use of.
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We can advise you on which platforms might be best for you and give you guidance on using them and on staying safe on them.
For businesses, we can setup, secure and help manage your business profiles, show you how to interact with users and keep your business listings up-to-date. We can also manage your SEO standing (this helps with how high up your business is on google search for example) and help you get listed on Google and Bing maps, and be available for users to ‘check-in’ when they visit you.
