Directive Blogs

As mobile technology booms, employers and employees are learning how to best take advantage of using new mobile technology in the workplace (a trend known as BYOD). To be sure, there are several advantages that come with BYOD, but there’s still hesitancy for many businesses to fully adopt mobile technology due to a lack of trust.

Black Friday is widely regarded as the most competitive day for American retailers, and for consumers standing in line to take advantage of rock-bottom prices, the general consensus is that all of this competition is great for their wallets. In the same way, your business can benefit from a healthy dose of friendly competition.

Every office worker knows that downtime experienced from a technology issue can totally derail the day’s productivity. However, one thing that office managers might not be aware of is how, in a downtime event, it’s possible to divert a worker’s energy so that productivity still happens on some level, which helps take the sting out of downtime.

It’s important to keep your communications plans organized, but it’s especially important for your IT department to keep in touch with other parts of your business. If a fatal problem shows its face, you want to make sure that they are there to fix it. In order to prevent these situations, plan out your IT communications strategy in detail, and stick to it.

There’s a value to having a neat and tidy office where everything is where it’s supposed to be. In addition to seeing a boost in productivity because you’re not having to fight clutter, you just feel good about working in a space that’s clean and orderly. These same principles of organization apply to your company’s network.

As we near the end of 2014, the topic of IT budgeting is on everyone’s minds. How much are you willing to spend, and on what? In order to provide optimal figures for the new year, you need to take some time to plan out what you think you need to spend, versus how much you’re willing to spend, on IT. Thankfully, you don’t have to do this alone.

Every business owner knows how important data backup is to their company's continuity plan, and they realize that a disaster recovery solution can help save them in the event of catastrophe. However, some businesses think they are the same thing, and they are sadly mistaken. While they are similar, a backup is not a disaster recovery solution.

There is consistent conversation about the security of your data and the best ways to minimize the risk of losing it. At some point in this conversation the topic of mobile devices comes up. The general consensus is that the more places your staff can access their work, the more they can get done, and how could it not? With smartphones becoming as predominant as coffee mugs, and the nature of mobile devices that have the capability of hopping from one network to the next, how can you ignore that the devices themselves are a data-loss risk?

Everyone is well aware of how mobile technology is changing everything. Therefore, it's a matter of time before we see new tech drastically change the office layout. This is what's happening in forward-thinking offices with a trend called "hoteling." If your business enjoys mobile technology and you want to get the most collaboration out of your staff, then hoteling is right for you.

In days of old, skilled people of all crafts joined together to improve the quality of their lives and their products. These were called guilds, and they're not unlike small businesses of today; a group of like-minded individuals who come together to make the public's lives easier. Your business is no different, and at Directive, we understand that.

Herding cats is a business term used to describe the task of organizing and controlling entities like people and systems known for being uncontrollable and even chaotic. Due to the unpredictable and independent nature of felines, cat herding captures the idea of controlled chaos perfectly. Does running your business feel like you're working on a cat ranch?

Autumn is a time of change and tradition, and perhaps one of the most well-known is the return of football season. Previously, the broadcasting of local NFL games was restricted by the blackout rule, but a recent revocation of the rule could change everything. Whether you are a football fan or not, this decision to revoke the blackout rule could affect future decisions made by the FCC.

The Internet makes marketing your business much easier, but it's not that way for everyone. A restaurant in California has responded to the standard Internet marketing strategy with an out-of-the-box method of its own. David Cerretini, co-owner of the Italian restaurant Botto Bistro, has told his strategy to USA Today; "I want to be the worst restaurant in the San Francisco area!"

A lot of employers are nervous about letting their employees work from home, but due to the increased evidence that it can be beneficial to productivity and cost-efficiency, it's getting more and more difficult to avoid thinking about it. In fact, according to Global Workplace Analytics, working from home has grown a whopping 80 percent in the United States since 2005.

As a business owner, you've probably had the misfortune of letting a valued (or not-so-valued) employee go. The reasons might vary, but one thing is consistent: they're gone, and could potentially use their newfound residual malice to strike your business right where it hurts. How can you prepare yourself against former employees you may have once called "family?"

The Internet of Things is on its way, and we are seeing new applications for web-connected devices every day. Perhaps one of the most interesting ways to use Internet of Things technology is its integration into agriculture, or more specifically, artichoke growing at Ocean Mist Farms in Salinas Valley, California.

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) has been a hot IT trend for the past few years. Initially, everybody loved the idea of workers using their personal smartphone for work and organizations were quick to adopt BYOD. Now, after years of trying out the policy, companies and employees are having reservations about BYOD, making some even long for the days of Blackberry.

A business owner must understand the licensing status of their company's software, but this has grown more complicated since the inception of the Internet. If you feel like your employees, or maybe even your corporate culture survives off of pirated software or applications, or stuff you found "for free" online, then your business could potentially suffer from legal issues.

Taking notes is a pain, and we all know that. One of the biggest problems with taking notes is that your team might store them all in different places. Before you know it, you have no idea where anything is or what has been done. Microsoft's OneNote on OneDrive changes that, providing a collaborative cloud-based solution for note taking.

Civilization has passed through various ages, like the Stone Age, the Ice Age, Bronze Age, and so on. And now, we're progressing through another one - the Data Age. In fact, 90 percent of the world's data was created in 2013. With each new device and system comes an incredible amount of data that must be processed, stored, and catalogued. This is Big Data, and the way that your business works with this information will determine the success of your business in the Data Age.