Business Solutions & Software Group Blog

For technology professionals, supporting small businesses is a constant balance between high-stakes problem-solving and strategic frustration. While tools are more accessible than ever, the gap between owning technology and utilizing it correctly remains a primary point of contention. As we move through 2026, IT experts are focusing on four critical areas where businesses must evolve.

Spreadsheets are arguably the most powerful tools in the modern office, yet few users fully leverage their advanced capabilities. Beyond simple calculations, spreadsheets offer intelligent features designed to eliminate manual tasks and reduce human error.

One such feature is the ability to automatically identify the day of the week for any given date.

As essential as technology is for businesses to compete and succeed nowadays, the investment needed to obtain and use local hardware is a lot to ask for many small and medium-sized businesses. Fortunately, technology also offers a solution to the conundrum: cloud-based hardware.

Let’s see what switching to the cloud can do to improve your business’ mobility and overall security.

How much of your workday is spent driving your business forward versus simply keeping it from stalling? If you are frequently sidelined by minor technical interruptions, your company is paying a steep price for your time.

As a leader, your value lies in high-level strategy, networking, and closing the deals that define your future. Every moment you spend navigating a technical glitch is a moment of lost opportunity.

In IT, there is a painful proverb we live by: A backup isn’t a backup until a restore has been successful.

Many business owners and even some junior sysadmins fall into the set-it-and-forget-it trap. They see the green checkmark in their backup software and sleep soundly. As an IT expert who has performed countless digital autopsies on failed systems, I can tell you that a green checkmark is often a liar.

Countless businesses out there rely on patchwork systems of spreadsheets, sticky notes, and emails to keep their customer relationships in an acceptable state. The problem is that this is no way to conduct customer relations, and the more you rely on manual systems like these, the more organizational debt you accumulate over time. Poor customer relationship management will cost your business hundreds of hours of lost productivity, and with that comes lost sales and opportunities. It doesn’t have to be this way.

There’s a certain trend you see in professional service firms, and it’s a concerning one. While you might be a law professional with loads of expertise in practicing law, you might be held back by your technology choices. It’s not your fault; it’s just becoming increasingly difficult to remain competitive. If you’re interested in scaling your law firm, protecting your clients, and reclaiming precious lost time, consider these four technologies.

The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) has sparked excitement, innovation, and, let's be honest, a fair bit of anxiety. It's a conversation happening in offices, factories, and even around dinner tables: "Is AI coming for my job?" It's a valid concern. We've seen incredible advancements, from AI writing articles and generating art to automating complex data analysis. So, how many jobs are truly at risk, and what does this mean for the future of work?

Imagine walking through your office and seeing an employee sitting at their desk, staring at their phone for 45 minutes while on the clock. You would step in and say something immediately, right?

Yet, this is exactly what happens every single day in small businesses across the country. It does not look like doing nothing, it looks like a spinning loading icon, a slow VPN connection, or a redundant data entry task.

In the IT world, hoping your backups work is a recipe for disaster. From a pro perspective, a backup that hasn't been tested is just a pile of useless data. We’ve moved past the days of just saving files to a thumb drive; today, it's about business continuity, making sure a company doesn't go bankrupt because a server died or a hacker got in.

If you want to keep a business alive, you need to know these three points.

Over the years, I have watched many industries get disrupted, but few have evolved as dramatically as the automotive sector. In just over two decades, the car has undergone a total metamorphosis. We have moved past the era of purely mechanical machines into an age where our vehicles are essentially high-performance computers on wheels.

Let’s look back at the 25-year digital revolution that turned the automobile into an intelligent, interconnected ecosystem.

The money you throw at anything to do with your business can work as one of two things: a fix or an investment. Obviously, the latter option is the better one, but how can you tell if your spending is actually helping support your future successes?

Here, you’ll find four questions that will act as a sort of litmus test to help you answer that question.

Did you know that most businesses are only one hard drive failure or disaster away from permanently ceasing to exist? While we wish this were hyperbole, the fact of the matter is that not all businesses take data backup and business continuity as seriously as they should. At its core, you can boil down data backup to three key pillars, and with the help of a qualified professional, it’s not nearly as challenging as you’d expect.

The holiday season isn’t usually a time we like to spend dwelling on unpleasantries, but unfortunately, cybercrime is too prevalent for us to ever let our guard down. However, in light of the holiday, we can tell a (somewhat) happier story that nevertheless reminds us what to keep an eye out for.

As such, please enjoy our version of Charles Dickens’ lesser-known holiday story.

One of the more frustrating parts of running a business with an IT budget is the rush to spend all those dollars before they get redistributed to other departments. This happens more often than you might think, yet despite this, you have businesses spending without thought, trying to use up the funds before they dry up. In reality, you want to have each of your IT purchases be an investment in the future of your business—an investment made with intention and thought.

Many businesses find themselves allocating their time for IT in a particular way—70 percent to maintenance, with only 30 percent dedicated to innovation and development. For real growth, the opposite is far preferable.

Fortunately, you can embrace better IT by simply reallocating some of your resources. Let’s explore how.

For most business owners, the question is no longer if a disruption will happen, but when. Whether it's a natural disaster, a major IT failure, or a security breach, every minute your business is down impacts your reputation, your bottom line, and your ability to serve your customers.

If your business is tired of dealing with distorted audio, dropped calls, and general telephone bill chaos, you’re not alone. Countless small businesses are in the same boat, struggling against their telephone provider as they try to run their business in a more efficient manner. Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, offers a comprehensive solution to this dilemma, provided you take the time to implement a system that works for you.

That’s what we’re going over today—how to find the right VoIP solution for your SMB and avoid the five most common mistakes they encounter when doing so.

If your company's main computer system completely crashes—we’re talking total shutdown from a dead hard drive, a nasty virus like ransomware, or someone majorly messing up—what actually happens?

For a lot of businesses, the plan is that one dusty external hard drive they plug in at the end of the day. That's not a plan; it's a wish… and when everything goes dark, wishing won't save your job or the business.

One of the most frustrating parts of working in any word processor is adjusting your text size—especially after you copy and paste content into a document. The formatting gets all out of whack and you’re left to pick up the pieces. One way you can make it easier to fix your formatting is to copy and paste as plain text into the document. We’ll show you how.