Reduce Costs with MPS

Every busy company knows how expensive printing services are. Between printing, copying, and faxing, the average U.S. office worker uses 10,000 sheets of paper each year. Depending on the size of your team, this figure can multiply quickly, affecting your printing costs and your bottom line. With Managed Print Services (MPS), companies can reduce printing costs, translating into significant savings for your business. By helping organizations gain control of their printing expenses and uncover hidden savings, MPS can lower printing costs by as much as 30 percent. If you’ve ever wondered how MPS can help your company save money, consider the following.

MPS quantifies your printing
Many businesses fail to tally up how much they actually spend on printing, oftentimes not taking the price of supplies, parts, maintenance, and repairs into account when doing so. While consumables and service can be easy to forget, these factors can be very costly. Between maintenance issues and overprinting, the total cost to print in the office is more expensive than one would think. Without having data to analyze, there is no way to determine exactly how much you’re spending on printing, what aspects can be reduced or consolidated, and how to accomplish your printing budget goals. With an  MPS solution, professionals collect and analyze your data from your infrastructure, enabling companies to quantify how much they spend on printing. From there, it’s easier to determine in which areas you are overspending and what steps to take to reduce your overall printing expenditure.

MPS improves productivity
Sometimes it takes an outside perspective to shed some truthful light upon a situation. While your company may believe that their office equipment devices are set up in a manner that maximizes efficiency and contributes to an overall better workflow, it actually may do the exact opposite. MPS professionals are trained to scout out the common mistakes in office print infrastructure configurations and address them with strategic solutions. For example, while it may seem like a good idea for every employee to have his or her own printer, it is actually much more productive and cost efficient to have one network multifunction printer in the office.

MPS frees up employee time
Employees are hardly productive when they spend their time waiting for documents to print. Similarly, your IT staff members can utilize their time much more wisely than by resolving office equipment maintenance and service issues. Time is money, especially in the office, and it should be utilized on value-adding tasks whenever possible. When your printing environment is managed by an MPS provider, you can help your staff maximize their time by eliminating the need for them to deal with printer-related issues.

Most companies would be shocked by how much they actually spend on printing. Moreover, they would be pleasantly surprised to know how much they could save by simply utilizing an MPS solution. Contact Infomax Office Systems today to schedule an MPS assessment for your business.

Is On-site IT Services Right for Your Business?

When something goes wrong in business, time is of the essence. When it comes to information technology (IT), problems or crises are magnified, as most businesses are heavily reliant on IT for everyday functions. Many companies rely on off-site IT departments or specialists to handle related issues, which can result in delayed responses and resolutions to serious dilemmas that can negatively impact their bottom line. If this sounds like your company, consider the following questions to help determine if on-site IT services are right for your business.

Do we communicate more effectively in person?
When discussing an issue over the phone, email, or online chats, details and particulars can be lost in translation. Most of the time, employees do not understand the exact nature of the situation when problems arise or how to relay this to their IT staff. All that is truly identifiable is a general issue, but that observation doesn’t provide IT services with the proper information to address and resolve the situation. If you and your coworkers are like most people and are better at communicating in-person, having someone on-site to help solve problems will prove helpful.

How often do we like to stay updated on the problem?
When you’re facing an issue that is restricting your employees’ ability to do their jobs, there is nothing worse than sitting around waiting to hear about an update. If you’re relying on off-site IT services that aren’t on hand to keep you abreast of the situation or if your outsourced IT team is working with numerous other clients simultaneously, it may be time to consider an alternative. Having trained IT professionals on-site ensures that the technician is in position to keep you informed about the situation while putting all of his or her attention on your team’s problem, rather than multitasking with other clients.

Are we shy about asking for assistance?
When dealing with an off-site IT team, many employees don’t report issues because they don’t want to bother another an external vendor with issues. This can be compounded if there are numerous or frequent issues and these problems remain unreported. Bringing an IT team on-site to answer questions and fix your problems feels like less of a burden than contacting an already-overloaded vendor off-site. IT issues that are reported and a healthy IT infrastructure ensures productivity and efficiency never suffer due to unresolved IT pitfalls.

Think it might be time for your organization to turn to an on-site IT service provider? Asking yourself the above three questions will help you determine whether you’d be better served working with a provider who offers more than just remote support. Contact Infomax Office Systems today to learn more about our on-site IT services.

Why You Need to Protect Yourself against Ransomware

Everyone has seen a movie or TV show where a criminal kidnaps a victim and demands a ransom in exchange for their release. What some people do not realize, however, is that demanding a ransom is not just confined to kidnappings. Today, many criminals employ ransomware, a form of malware or computer virus that locks a user’s keyboard or computer and holds their data ‘hostage’ until the victim pays a ransom in exchange for restoring access to it.

Recently, computer criminals used ransomware to conduct the largest cyberattack in history. More than 200,000 Windows operating systems in more than 150 countries—including the United States, England, Germany, and Japan—were infected with the ransomware strain WannaCry or WanaCrypt0r2.0. Victims had the data on their computers encrypted or scrambled, effectively locking them out of it while demanding they pay a ransom of between $300 and $600. The attack was not limited to personal PCs—WannCry victims included hospitals, banks, and government agencies.

So, how does ransomware work? Well, just like in the movies, someone takes something you own and holds it hostage until you send them the money they demand in return. The individual requesting the ransom infects your computer with a virus, usually by sending an email that requests the user to click on a link. Once the virus infects the system, the hacker can lock down the computer’s files and extort the user until he or she is paid the money.

While this may seem like a relatively simple issue to resolve, the problem lies in the information that is being held hostage. Few organizations can operate without their data, and if one doesn’t have this data backed up, the impact of a ransomware attack can be crippling. In addition, the FBI, Department of Justice, and many technology firms suggest you don’t pay the ransom. Doing so does not guarantee you’ll regain access to your data, and since you’ve already been exposed to the virus and shown a willingness to pay the ransom, you’re vulnerable to be re-targeted again in the future.

How can you protect yourself against ransomware? To help prevent these kinds of attacks, there are a few steps you can take to mitigate risk. First, regularly install Microsoft security patches and system updates, frequently backup your files, secure your router, and—perhaps most important of all—don’t open suspicious emails. If it’s too late and a virus has already taken over your system, the most crucial step is disconnecting from the Internet to prevent the virus from spreading. Then, you should report the attack to authorities and file a complaint with the Internet Crime Complaint Center. Finally, wipe your PC and restore your data and files from backups.

Big risks can sometimes yield big rewards, but not when it comes to cybersecurity. Be sure your organization is doing all it can to protect itself from ransomware and other cyberattacks. Contact Infomax Office Systems today to learn how our on-site Managed IT services can help give you peace of mind from ransomware attacks.