productivity · 4 Corner IT

How to Improve Your Battery Life

Everyone has encountered a time where their “phone’s about to die” since the battery is too low. There are several methods to prolong your cell phone battery’s life. This article emphasizes the simple and cost-effective solutions to keep your battery charged for an extended amount of time.

Try to Eliminate the Use of Battery-Draining Applications

Your opened applications can take up a lot of your cell phone battery’s life. The applications with more features take up a lot of power; thus draining the battery faster. For example, YouTube or an Internet browser requires the downloading of videos, links, etc. By reducing the amount of time spent using these apps, you can prolong the device’s battery life.

Lock Your Device and Close Applications When They Are Not in Use

Not only is locking your cell phone extremely helpful from a security perspective, it can also help extend your cell phone battery’s life. Closing your applications can also help improve battery life, but to an extent. Generally speaking, if you no longer need to use an application, you can close it. Thus, removing it from your cell phone’s RAM (also known as, stopping the app from running in the background) resulting in reduced power consumption from the battery. On the other hand, opening an application takes more power than having an application run in the background for a few minutes to an hour.

Update Your Operating System

The operating system (OS) manages how the cell phone functions. Thus, the OS is also involved with the device’s battery life. Keeping the operating system updated can normally improve your cell phone battery’s life. It will improve the overall performance of your device as it will utilize the available energy in a more efficient and optimized manner.

Use Sleep Mode

Most cell phone devices will have an option available where the screen is turned off and the applications running in the background are paused until you actively use your phone again. Using the sleep mode setting can be an effective way to conserve battery life. Sleep mode also serves as some type of security measure because when the screen is turned off, it requires a password to start up again.

Scale Back on Notifications and Location Services

Depending on the kinds of applications you are using, you can probably turn off notifications and location services to extend your cell phone battery’s life. If you do not need to be alerted by notifications for a particular app, it is best to turn off notifications so as not to drain the battery. Majority of applications ask to use your location in order to use various features. There are various options to choose from but if you allow location access only while using the app, this option will help to prolong your cell phone battery’s life.

Let Us Help You Preserve Your Technology Today

4 Corner IT can help you and your business with technology solutions. To learn more, call us today at 954.474.2204.

Building a More Business Productivity with Technology

Productivity is the measure of the efficiency of people in a business completing certain tasks. The tools provided and the employee’s ability to carry out these tasks result in the overall productivity of a company. The proper use of technology in your organization can significantly increase your business’ productivity.

Business Technology Tiers

If you are interested in incorporating additional technology into your company, it is generally because you want to make your business process more efficient. Doing so will improve your overall productivity. There are three tiers used in digital transformation:

Operational: incorporates business management applications, productivity, and communications
Supply Chain: data collection based on your business procurement, processing, and distribution processes is utilized
Digital Platforms: implemented to promote and/or sell goods or services

Better Productivity with Operational Technology

Companies must provide the most efficient work tools to allow their employees to be the most productive they can be. Workplace tools generally involve technological advances as these can help maximize overall productivity. Customer relationship management (CRM) technology provides users with the ability to track progress, time, and interaction with clients to keep them updated on the progress of various projects. Communication tools can include Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), email, and video conferencing. Productivity tools such as Microsoft Office and Google Drive offer users the ability to be more productive. It allows for built-in collaboration with other members of your staff. These features give users access to the tools necessary to promote productivity while also incorporating communication with one another.

Better Productivity with Supply Chain Technology

The supply chain is fundamental to a company’s ability to generate the goods and services they offer to customers. Even service-oriented businesses must have an efficient supply chain in order to service their clients in a timely manner. Today’s technology offers transparent services by providing logistics information, management of inventory, and other processes to track and manage goods, fleets of vehicles, and Internet of Things devices. All these systems collect data that is required to fully understand how to maximize the efficiency of your company.

Better Productivity with Digital Platform Technology

In today’s day and age of doing business, it is crucial to have some type of online presence. This allows businesses to reach many people from various parts of the world. Many companies have elevated this idea of online presence in the form of applications that allow both their employees and clients to use them with quicker ease. While CRMs, file sharing platforms, and collaboration systems are technically called digital platforms, online digital platforms typically refer to a business’ webpage, social media, and stand-alone applications that can further assist a company’s relationship with its customers. The integration of these digital platforms and other workplace tools in place will give you a better understanding of how you can create a more productive and effective business.

The utilization of technology in business is growing exponentially. If you would like to learn more about how the professionals at 4 Corner IT can help your company acquire the proper tools needed to build a more productive business, please contact us today at 954.474.2204.

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Tips to Help Boost Smartphone Productivity

Smartphones have become a significant part of people’s everyday lives. One smartphone can have everything a person may need to get themselves through the day, from maps to planners. Over the years, smartphones have become tools to help boost productivity for people in their personal lives. In addition to while they are in the workplace.

Companies have begun to realize the potential of integrating smartphones as a tool. This is to help translate productivity into profitability in their business. Using smartphones can work against your business if you don’t implement the right policies to get your employee’s smartphone usage to work for you and minimize distractions. Here are some tips you can use in your business to effectively use smartphones to boost productivity and reduce distractions.

Increase Collaboration and Communication

Smartphones are an effective business tool. You can utilize cloud-based applications to help employees complete tasks and communicate quickly from wherever they work. With smartphones, employees can work better with their teams by improving communication and collaboration. Employees can have email, productivity apps, and communication tools installed on their devices. This will increase productivity and allow them to easily connect with customers and colleagues.

Limit Smartphone Notifications

One of the drawbacks of allowing smartphone usage within your business is they have the potential to be incredibly distracting. To optimize productivity, control notifications by limiting them when possible. Then there will be few distractions to take you or your employees away from their tasks. Encourage or require your team to disable notifications from unnecessary apps to minimize the number of disruptions during hours when they need to focus the most.

Reduce Digital Clutter on Smartphone

A smartphone designated for work should have limited applications that can potentially waste time and not be directly used for work purposes. However, this more applies to smartphones that are company-owned devices given out to employees. Many companies implement a mobile device manager or MDM to limit the ability to download apps on devices and ensures enough space is available on the device for essential functions.

Use a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) Policy

Issuing company-owned devices can be a major cost and allowing your employees to use their personal smartphones for work purposes. Employees are likely comfortable using their personal devices and are likely to be more productive using them for work tasks. Allowing employees to bring their own devices for work purposes will require clear policies to ensure employees know how to use their devices when on the clock correctly.

Smartphones have come a long way and, when used with the right tools, can help boost workplace productivity. Your business can be the most productive by using an MDM to ensure your employee’s usage of smartphones is working for you to help your organization.

To learn more about how we can help you get started with mobile device management and smartphone productivity, reach out to 4 Corner IT at 954.474.2204.

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AI Can Serve a Valuable Role in Small Businesses

The world of artificial intelligence has vastly grown over the last few years. As advances are made, companies have found helpful ways to incorporate this innovation into their business technology. Thus, making business operations more efficient. What’s even better is that as AI develops, it becomes more accessible to small businesses that can greatly benefit from the technology as well. Let’s discuss how a small business might put artificial intelligence to use. Then, what it can do for their operations and growth.

What is Artificial Intelligence?

While the term AI is thrown around a lot in the technology world, many people are unaware of what it actually means. Artificial Intelligence is much more than Siri, Alexa, and cognitive thinking robots.

AI is basically any software that is designed to follow similar patterns as our own learning and reasoning processes do in order to solve problems. It is our attempt to mimic our own cognitive processes.

How Can Today’s Small Businesses Use AI?

Enhancing Cybersecurity

Artificial intelligence systems can help greatly in improving your office’s cybersecurity. They do this by tracking patterns and alerting whenever there is a break in said pattern. It will get to know your employee’s regular daily activities, used devices and applications, and times of activity. Therefore, it can alert you if there is any activity out of the ordinary like an attempted login in the middle of the night or attempts to override security measures. These sort of alerts can prevent cybercriminals gaining access to crucial information, reducing the possibility of a cyberattack.

Optimizing Customer Service

As we know, having prompt and helpful customer service is essential to any businesses’ overall customer satisfaction, but this can often result in valuable employee time being used to answer the same common questions over and over again. However, with AI you can automate these customer service actions that don’t require a live individual, saving your employees time and giving customer the quick and accurate help that they need. Automation also helps collect information from customers that your business could benefit from tracking.

Improving Marketing Efforts

One of the most important elements of a good marketing strategy is tracking and reading analytics. This process is very repetitive and time consuming for employees to complete, as there is often a lot of data and insights generated. Luckily innovation in AI can improve this process through automation. Artificial Intelligence now has the capabilities to take over these organizational and analytical processes on the business’s behalf, allowing you to easier identify which of your marketing efforts is most beneficial, and where your strategy needs improvement.

Artificial Intelligence is More Accessible than Ever!

If you, like many, didn’t realize that artificial intelligence may be something accessible to your small business, learn more AI and other business technology capabilities today! Give 4 Corner IT a call at 954-474-2204 to discuss what your options may be.

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Employees Do Their Best Work When They are Comfortable

If employees can remain productive for extended periods of time, their business tends to enjoy rapid growth. Unfortunately, this high level of productivity is not always sustainable, and it eventually slows for a variety of reasons. However, if you can make sure your employees are comfortable, then they will be more likely to maintain a manageable level of productivity.

Most businesses have historically given employees enough to do their jobs, and that was that. This trend has slowly dissipated over the years as employers have become more cognizant of the benefits of making their employees more comfortable. Here are three ways you can increase employee comfort and, likewise, their productivity.

Give them Hope Enough to Focus on Work

People don’t usually leave their jobs because they don’t like the people, they don’t get enough time off, and they can’t stand the company culture. They leave because they will find someone who will pay them more or give them the edge they need to jumpstart their career. Just about all businesses want to see their employees work their way up in the company, but with higher turnover rates, it can become evident that workers would rather jump ship in certain scenarios than wait for these opportunities to become available.

Employees will often find themselves stressed out or flustered over things external to their work, so the less stress they associate with the office, the better. While you might not be able to pay them in accordance with their talents in all cases, you can give them a sense of fulfillment by empowering them to work on projects that tap into their unique skill sets. Most people like being challenged just enough to keep themselves focused on the task at hand, and if they are focused, they’ll be less likely to leave for your competition.

Extend More than Fringe Benefits

While it’s certainly nice to provide snacks and drinks for your employees, it’s often the bigger-ticket items that will make the biggest difference in your workforce’s lives. It might be nice to provide them with Swiss Rolls, but when they can’t go to the dentist to address the cavities from uncontrollably eating said Swiss Rolls, it creates a serious point of contention for them. Do your best to provide adequate health and wellness programs, retirement programs, debt relief, and even student loan repayment if possible.

Many of today’s workers don’t have the above; they only have their paychecks to rely on, and it is a major stressor. This is why they may seek out other opportunities. If you can invest in your staff beyond their compensation, such as by providing them with working technology and investing in their wellness, you can significantly reduce your turnover rate.

Provide a Pleasant or Flexible Work Experience

The pandemic has brought about a mindset shift in the modern worker. They now realize just how much time they are investing into their employer, and this doesn’t sit well with many of them. If you can give your team the ability to spend more time with their family or give them time to accomplish their goals outside of the office, you might find that they are more comfortable in their employment with you.

Remember, not everyone can work remotely, and many people simply don’t (or won’t) want to. While remote operations can help in a certain capacity, it’s important to keep in mind what can and cannot be accomplished through remote operations. In cases where remote operations may not be feasible, you can instead adopt a flexible working schedule or hybrid workplace.

How can your business make its employees more comfortable? Let us know in the comments, and be sure to subscribe to our blog for more introspective and thought-provoking business ideas.

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