Thanks to the unprecedented rise of communications platforms such as Facebook and Snapchat, many modern workers are starting to use them for business purposes. However, such unsanctioned tools are not built for business use and could pose a number of issues surrounding security and productivity.

According to a new report from managed services organisation Maintel, organisations must become more receptive to employee concerns about business-approved communication tools; failure to do so will only encourage the use of non-business-grade platforms.

What makes certain platforms better for business?

Communications tools designed for business use are usually adopted to maximise user productivity, improve situational awareness, boost system reliability, reduce costs, ensure compliance with certain legislation, and optimise security measures. When employees defect to other more casual platforms it is often because their business-sanctioned alternatives offer poor user experience.

To combat this, businesses must listen to employees and focus their efforts on making mandated platforms easy and more attractive to use. What’s more, these platforms must be integrated with network management software; such as helpdesks that offer speedy response times.

Why unsanctioned tools are so popular

Maintel states in its report that ‘popular consumer platforms are often preferred over business-grade alternatives because, they have been specially developed to be speedy and easy to use.’

However, they also come with security risks. Many businesses choose to block platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook Messenger to avoid the possibility of corporate oversight.

How to communicate effectively with employees

To ensure that employees understand why there are rules around communications platforms and to ensure compliance, it is important to enter into healthy dialogue with them. When reviewing your communications strategy, therefore, you may do well to consider the following approaches:

1. Gather feedback

Try to gather honest feedback about your current business communications platform. This will guide you when it comes to improving the user experience and will ensure that employees feel heard, thereby encouraging them to use sanctioned tools.

Reasons for choosing a communication tool for your business need to be as strong as the reasons not to switch platforms. Whichever platform you end up using, it is important to make sure that best practices are communicated clearly.

2. Set out clear policies for every platform

It is important to remember that sanctioned communications systems can still be misused with intently or accidentally. In this way, you must draw up clear policies about the types of acceptable use.

Explain the reasons for your policies. If colleagues understand that breaching them could have serious security implications, they more likely to adhere to the rules. Business owners should also ensure that their policies are communicated others using your corporate system such as a company partner.

3. Try to gently persuade employees

Blocking certain platforms is sometimes counterintuitive as it can instil feelings of resentment in your workers. Indeed, they may feel infantilised or that they are being made to use unproductive systems. In this way, you need to ensure that your communications are respectful and carefully lay out why the use of certain platforms is prohibited.

The key to a healthy and collaborative workforce is offering modern tools and a network management system that facilitates communication. Whilst it is reasonable to draw rules around social media platforms, you must offer excellent alternatives.

If you’re the manager of a technical team, you’re probably well aware that convincing employees to adopt a new process and break away from old habits can be difficult.

Of course, change is inevitable and necessary for every organisation. Say, for instance, that you’re concerned about the amount of money a specific piece software is costing your business. Although it is well-loved and your team members know it inside out, it probably makes good business sense to move on to something cheaper and more up-to-date.

Securing alignment between your team and your new product, however, may not be easy. Whilst some may be happy to learn how to use the new technology, one or two team members may rebel. To help you deal with this situation and ensure that all team members are on board with new technologies or processes, we’ve put together a few tips for managers attempting to implement change:

1. Subtly introduce changes into the everyday working environment

Gradually conditioning employees to anticipate change will help to prepare them for any major future organisational shifts. This could mean anything from swapping seating allocations frequently or allowing different people to present at conferences.

As well as implementing these team changes, you should try to get employees involved with the process. This could involve setting up brainstorming meetings or conducting regular surveys to make sure the workforce is involved in making decisions about upcoming changes. This will allow them to feel that they are part of the changes rather than simply having to passively accept them.

2. Communicate changes well in advance

Strong communication is absolutely vital if you want to nurture a happy workforce. Failing to communicate changes or communicating them poorly could make employees reluctant to comply with new processes. To ensure that changes are crystal clear you should:

– Spell out the reasons for the changes, as well as how employees will be affected. Remember to provide concrete evidence when doing this.
– Let your team know precisely when the changes will occur and what they will need to do (if anything).
– Enlist willing team members to spread positive communications about the upcoming changes.
– Offer support services related to changes implementation.
– Send communications out via a number of channels including email and your staff intranet.

3. Encourage employees to ask questions

One of the biggest obstacles businesses face when implementing change is the spread of misinformation and hearsay. To combat this, encourage employees to speak up about any questions or worries they may have about new processes or software. This should help keep the record straight.

4. Host small group meetings about changes

Try not to break the news about changes to large groups as this may hinder productive discussions. Instead, gather small teams together to encourage open and healthy conversations.

5. Measure how well new processes are being integrated

When implementing changes, try to measure their impact on your team. This will help you and your colleagues understand whether there are any ways in which your implementation plan could be improved. Start by distributing feedback surveys and setting up regular update meetings to let colleagues know about how well the new changes are going.

Addressing resistance to change is fairly simple once you know how. It doesn’t involve any cheap tricks and requires you only to be honest, open and communicative.

Delivering effective management behaviours is to understand and tailor both attitudes and actions to gain the best response from the specific group being managed. This is particularly true when managing engineers and technical teams, who may respond in ways that other groups might not. Here are those seven ‘secrets’ towards success…

1. Highlight the importance of great products

Show how these are valued by customers and are valuable to others within the organisation whose task is to promote or sell them. Find ways to highlight the team’s technical achievements, whether through blogs or newsletters, messages on internal digital signage, celebratory meetings and events.

2. Recognise and reward problem-solving successes

This follows on from the previous point. Technical teams love to solve problems, suggest improvements, and deliver upgrades. This dynamic is so different from other activities within an operation, yet so vital to its success. As mentioned previously, make sure the world outside the team knows of such achievements, and seek out ways to offer rewards, either through financial means or clear recognition.

3. Set objectives, goals and timelines – but don’t prescribe processes

Akin to delegation, allow a technical team to define how the work will be accomplished. Using their specific skill-sets, while having them appreciate the importance of all deadlines is critical. The result will be an enthusiastic and energetic group; compared to those told ‘do exactly this’ often by someone with less knowledge and expertise of the work involved!

4. Provide specific feedback both through data and experiences

When managing smart staff, whether engineers or technical teams, it can be easy to assume they always know how good they are. But, as in any group, members will suffer from the occasional lack of confidence, or uncertainty. Technical teams appreciate data showing that they’re getting it right by showing the beneficial experiences of customers using the products successfully. 

5. Don’t financially force technicians to be managers

Some will want that career path, and that’s great. Others will be content to develop their expertise and become better where they are. It’s important not to overcompensate management in comparison, and to ensure that salary and bonus structures, as well as hierarchical ones, allow an individual’s preferred path to be followed.

6. Create a developing talent pool

Increasingly, in many sports, especially those where transfer fees can be astronomical, increasing importance is being given to developing homegrown stars. Hiring the next generation as raw talent, fostering their abilities and confidence, helps deliver seamless transitions when vacancies – inevitable in any team.

7. Quietly celebrate those who leave

A tad controversial? This is about positively recognising when someone occasionally (and for positive reasons) chooses to move on, rather than sourly decrying it. Know that this is thanks to the way they have been managed and developed, that the previous point has ensured a replacement is ready formed. Such events actually offer a positive message to those within a technical team – or looking to join it.

Developing technical teams is a truly satisfying management activity, one that provides tangible results – something we truly believe in here at Opmantek.

As any business owner is probably well aware, keeping up with the changing world of technology is vital if you want to stay competitive in the game. With new digital and software trends shifting on a seemingly daily basis, however, this is easier said than done. Fortunately, we’ve put together a brief guide to staying on top of tech as a business owner.

Why developing your tech knowledge could help your business

1. It enhances the customer experience

Customers have increasingly high expectations in today’s tech-savvy world and expect companies to offer seamless online customer service experiences. Ensuring that your online offerings are intuitive and efficient will ensure that customers keep coming back for more.

2. Tech can make your processes more efficient

As new business systems continue to be developed, tasks that once seemed onerous are being done at an increasingly speedy rate and with minimal effort. By keeping up with changes, you can make sure that your business runs as smoothly as possible.

3. Fend off competition

Staying on top of new tech trends will prepare your company to adapt to consumer demands and fend off competitors.

4. Boost cost-efficiency

Outdated technologies can cost a lot of money to repair and, whilst new systems may involve substantial investment, they will save you money in the long term.

Of course, keeping up with technologies takes a certain amount of skill. To ensure that your business is as tech-savvy as possible, you should take heed of the following techniques:

1. Set out a solid IT strategy

Assessing your business needs and evaluating how much you can afford to spend on new technologies will help you to narrow down what sort of products to invest in.

2. Consider managed services

Investing in managed services is a great way to stay on top of IT trends without having to lift a finger. Indeed, putting your faith in professionals will allow you to get on with running your business whilst ensuring that your technologies are kept up to date.

3. Opt for automated software updates

When drawing up your IT strategy, assess whether you should opt for automatic updates to ensure that programmes continue to run smoothly.

4. Look to the future

If a promising new technology is on the horizon, get a member of your IT team to do their research and draw up a report about whether it is worth investing in. This will make sure that you use your resources wisely.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the creation of the TCP/IP protocols which allowed robust high-speed communications between interconnected devices on a WAN. When the 26-year-old Vint Cerf developed the protocols in his lab at the University of California he had no idea how important they would become.

Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) are the foundations of the internet. These two simple protocols allow us to: send emails, connect to cloud services, get directions to our smartphone, buy from Amazon and stream movies from Netflix.

The internet is starting to show its age

50 years is a long time in computer science and the World Wide Web is starting to creak under the strain of having to connect an ever-growing number of devices. Initially, these two protocols were only designed to transmit relatively small amounts of data between remote routers and switches located in different states.
With the use of cloud services increasing such as AWS, Microsoft Azure and Machine-Learning tools like TensorFlow mean, they are now tasked with transmitting TBs of data across the globe. An ever-growing list of connected devices including Internet of Things (IoT) and smartphones is consistently impacting the reliability of services.

A new internet fit for the 21st century

Any network admin who uses network management software to monitor traffic across domains, knows the pressure weighing on the current system. Most network management systems control traffic to maintain QoS and reduce bottlenecks; this approach can only go so far before services are impacted.
So, it is no surprise that computer scientists are starting to explore new ways of sharing data between devices. As part of this initiative, the National Science Foundation has funded an umbrella project to help reimagine the internet. The $20 million funds will allow computer scientists to begin developing new protocols and architectures to solve the issues prevalent in the current infrastructure.

The scheme joins one of many initiatives which have been set up to explore how the internet will work going forward. A range of technologies is being considered to replace TCP/IP including bandwidth and routing based on blockchain technology.

One such group is FileStorm and YottaChain who are jointly working on a distributed storage system based on blockchain. They say this will be more secure and resilient than existing cloud technologies and will require fewer resources making it cheaper for companies to run.

The system uses a new Interplanetary File Storage (IPFS) protocol to distribute data files with each transaction recorded in the blockchain. IPFS distributes file parts synchronously from multiple computers at the same time, which in theory should make the system more resilient to data loss than current systems.

While BlockApps is developing a similar decentralized platform using blockchain to record the location of file snippets on nodes spread across the world. This approach is more secure than legacy file storage systems because only the blockchain knows the location of each file snippet making it impossible to hack entire files.

Conclusion

While this technology is still in the embryonic stage and is yet to be proven at scale, Next-Generation Internet technology promises to disrupt networking and cloud computing as we know it.
In theory, such technologies will offer superior file transfer times, stronger security, greater resilience and reduced operating costs. This will result in a new breed of cloud-based services to replace legacy ones and could herald a new dawn for AI connected apps and big data.

When you hear Opmantek refer to ‘Automation’, it’s not just a buzzword – it’s kind of a big deal! But..what exactly is it, and why should you care? Let’s get to the nuts and bolts of it.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) focuses on automating human processes and functional tasks.
Operational Process Automation (OPA) is the next evolution of RPA, which delivers specifically to IT and network operations teams and carries out advanced analysis and troubleshooting tasks.
So, whilst RPA focuses on only automating actions, OPA also integrates thinking and decision making.
When Opmantek talks about Automation, it’s OPA we’re referring to – It Detects, Diagnoses and Acts.

But “How does that help me?” I hear you ask…

The purpose of OPA is to get the right systems and workflows in place to:

• Remove repetitive tasks from your workload
• Predict faults before they arise
• Remediate issues on your behalf
• Assist you with maintenance tasks, and
• Interpret complex data for you

In short, OPA serves to augment a network engineering or system administration role. That’s right, it’s the extra set of hands you didn’t know you had and allows you to give your tasks to machines.

Meet the new recruit

The good news is your newest team member doesn’t eat, sleep, or take time off! They complete tasks accurately and the same way each time, and like a human – learn and become more efficient as time goes on. The great news is they come experienced and will hit the ground running, but OPA can also be trained to take on more complex tasks that are specific to your network.

OPA’s Resumé

Let’s look at some of OPA’s experience working in real organizations.

Telecommunications Carrier – USA

In a Network Operations Center (NOC) environment: the team gets an alert, does some diagnosis and if they deem the problem can’t be fixed remotely, a field service team member is sent out to resolve the fault.
During recent snowstorms, field service calls were extremely high and they were finding over 50% to be false reports. That’s right, real-world field services team members were being sent into the snow to fix faults that didn’t exist.

OPA came onboard to handle alerts and find the source of problems. Event storms were brought to zero, deduplication was no longer a problem and only real events were pushed to the human team. Consequently, field service calls were reduced and the network was brought back to normal in half the time.

Energy Company – USA

New federal and state mandates required the company to provide in-depth and detailed accounting audits of devices and software licenses.

Their existing team didn’t have extensive IT experience, they were working in the confines of a highly restricted secure network, and they had a very limited budget to find a solution.
With OPA on the team, they can now generate detailed ad-hoc reports for internal management or audit demands. Federal and State audit requirements are now met and they’ve even saved 30% on their annual budget.

Wireless Internet Service Provider – USA

A WISP with infrastructure based in desert areas was experiencing equipment failure due to temperature shifts. They were constantly inundated with alerts and the resolution process involved physically attending the site to restart the affected equipment.

Failing to meet their service level agreements, they were losing customers.
They’ve now revised their operational playbook to incorporate OPA. Issues are being automatically remediated as they occur, and an escalation process has been built to look out for symptoms before they’re even triggered into events. They now proactively resolve faults before they turn into issues, with customers unaware there was ever even a problem.

Curious to see whether OPA could be the right fit for your organization? Speak to a network engineer about your requirements and learn more about automation. We’re a technically led team, so prepare for a conversation about solutions, not sales;