Business Technology Insights

Working remotely has been a crucial aspect of flattening the curve during the COVID-19 pandemic. While this measure is temporary for some businesses, for others it is here to stay. 

In a recent article published on BBC Worklife, “How offices will change after the coronavirus”, Jessica Mudditt describes how offices in the future might evolve to new rules for workplace hygiene.

“Experts suggest this could involve a combination of short-term fixes aimed at boosting worker confidence, reducing the number of staff in the office at any one time and longer-term design upgrades and modifications that put hygiene at the heart of workplace planning. “

In a previous blog, we looked at an article published in BBC Worklife, “How offices will change after the coronavirus.”  One of the experts interviewed, Albert De Plazaola, global strategy director at Unispace, spoke about the new mobile workforce, and how firms may start subsidizing home offices.

One of the key measures to flatten the curve of COVID-19 is social distancing. Ontario has enforced social distancing by limiting the number of people gathering to a maximum of five and closing all non-essential businesses.

Good communication is crucial to any successful business. That’s why many companies around the world are turning to cloud-based hosted Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone systems to improve both the efficiency of their internal and external communications at a lower cost.

Small and medium-sized businesses in today’s market operate in a highly competitive world. To ensure they delight their customers and offer a superior experience over their competitors, efficiency is key.

Whether you are trying to cut your company’s expenses or simply looking to improve visibility into your budget, it pays to know how much your office supplies cost each month.

Did you know, however, that printing expenses from copiers and printers can be one of the largest unmanaged costs for small to medium-sized businesses? In fact, a study from Gartner estimates that organizations spend approximately 1-3 percent of annual revenue on printing - yet 90 percent of North American companies have no idea what their annual printing costs are.

When you run your own business, you put a vast amount of time into making it a success. In fact, the majority of small business owners in the US say they work at least 50 hours per week - far more than the national average of 33.8 hours per week reported by the Bureau of Labour Statistics.

33 percent of small business owners reported working more than 50 hours a week, with an additional 25 percent of small business owners claiming they work more than 60 hours a week, according to a poll of readers of the New York Enterprise Report.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Small to medium-sized companies across the world are making the transition to becoming digital businesses. That means less time passing around paper documents that can easily be lost, and an increased focus on turning those documents into an electronic format.

By moving physical paperwork into a digital format, employees within your company will be able to efficiently access documents when required. You’ll also give these documents improved protection through backups and other security methods.

At OT Group, we receive a large number of questions from businesses in regards to which printer they should choose for their office. Perhaps the most common question, however, is whether they should purchase or lease a printer.

Investing in a printer or photocopier is a big decision for any size business. You want to make it as cost-effective as possible, but at the same time, you want to ensure your company invests in the right technology to give your employees the tools they need to be productive.