One of the most popular business technology trends that we're seeing is employees bringing their own devices into the workplace (BYOD). This trend is due to the popularity of mobile devices (owned by over half of all U.S. adults). While this trend benefits companies in many ways like enhancing mobility, implementing BYOD for a business is not without risks.
If you haven't yet upgraded from Windows XP, then you and 29% of the world must have strong reasons for hanging on to a twelve year old product. Unfortunately, everybody's strong reasons won't hold water come April 8th when Microsoft stops supporting XP with new security patches.
Tablets have a reputation for being a fun consumer product, but they can also be utilized as a practical business tool. In fact, tablets can be used to accomplish a variety of business-related tasks. Here are five practical uses for tablets that you can use around the office.
A Cash Register
A standard cash register is a clunky piece of equipment. Replacing your cumbersome register with a tablet will give your business a sleek and modern feel that your customers will appreciate. By installing a digital payment app like Square and plugging a credit card reader into your tablet, you will effectively turn your tablet into a cash register. This will allow you to serve your customers in new ways. You can even enable the "ka-ching" sound effect if you want to provide your customers with the full shopping experience.
A Kiosk
Whether you're representing your company at a trade show booth or you have a waiting room at your office, scenarios like these would be a perfect place to have a tablet on display that will inform people what your business is about. Turning a tablet into a kiosk is as easy as loading it with your company's website, adjusting the settings so that it can't be used for anything else besides viewing your website, and then leaving it in a convenient spot for your customers to find.
Working without Distractions
Most tablets can only process one application at a time. This is a bummer for those who love to multitask, but for those who are distracted by multitasking, a one-trick-pony tablet is a perfect productivity solution. For example, if you really need to write a blog article and the writing application is the only app opened, you will be more likely to crank it out using a tablet than if you were on a PC and had multiple and distracting applications open.
A Second Monitor
It doesn't take much to hook your tablet up to your PC and turn it into an additional monitor. This will help improve your productivity by allowing you to view multiple open applications at once (which is the opposite of the previous example). As a bonus, when you're done working on your PC, you can sync your project to your tablet, unplug the tablet from your workstation, and then take the project with you.
Taking Notes
A tablet is a great device for recording audio from a meeting, and you can use a keyboard to type your notes to your tablet. You can even use a stylus to transcribe your notes onto a tablet if that's your preferred way to input data. You can also download apps specific for note -taking like Evernote or OneNote. These apps will allow you to easily share your notes with others and sync them across all of your different devices.
As you can see, a tablet is much more than an entertainment device. However, one nice feature about using a tablet for business, is that when you're done working on stuff, you can close your project and open a movie, eBook, or game!
Using mobile devices for work purposes is a major trend called BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) that more businesses are implementing. BYOD brings with it unique challenges to the security of a company's network, but these challenges can be managed with proper security tools, policies, and oversight. To learn more about what it takes to equip your business with tablets or other mobile devices, call Infradapt at 800.394.2301.
The end-of-support date for Windows XP is April 8. If you're still running XP, then you likely have a strong reason for it. Although, your reason may not be strong enough in light of how big of a security risk XP will be. Let's dismantle three of the most common reasons people are choosing to stick with XP.
This statistic comes from California-based market research firm In-Stat, and it highlights the growth of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology. To give you an idea of how far VoIP has come in recent years, this figure was at 42% just five years ago. Is your business taking advantage of the VoIP revolution?