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DC Region’s Extreme Weather & Stronger Storms… Protect Your Business with Cloud & Business Continuity Planning

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TCI’s cutting-edge Disaster Recovery solutions are tailored to help protect your entire IT environment – from data and applications to office computers, mobile devices, networks, and phone systems.

Will your business continue to operate when disaster strikes?

Here are just some of the ways TCI’s comprehensive approach helps you safeguard what counts:

  • Determine appropriate risk reduction strategies, remedies, and alternatives for critical systems and networks, including affordable ways to address voice and data protection measures like off-grid power sourcing and secure off-site storage.
  • Enable a remote work program that can keep your business open when your office is shut down during an emergency.
  • Avoid critical data loss or recovery delays dealing with missing databases, disrupted systems, networks, and more.

And if you’re considering moving to the cloud, remember you don’t have to do it all at once.

Create a plan. Identify what should stay in-house and what should go to the cloud. Focus on what you’d need to operate if a major interruption or disaster occurred. Determine the connectivity your employees need to do their jobs remotely. Also, work toward consistent and seamless end-to-end communications. TCI can help you build a hybrid or full cloud solution that meets your business needs.

The cloud gives your company the agility it needs to respond to any disruption, be it a natural disaster, pandemic, security breach, or a failure of your network or hardware.

Schedule your Business Continuity planning session today. Contact TCI at (703) 321-3030 or GetHelp@tcicomm.com.
 

Hurricane Season & Stronger Storms – How Business Continuity Planning with TCI Helps Protect Your IT Assets

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TCI’s cutting-edge Disaster Recovery solutions are tailored to help protect your entire IT environment – from data and applications to office computers, mobile devices, networks, and phone systems.

Will your business continue to operate when disaster strikes?

Here are just some of the ways TCI’s comprehensive approach helps you safeguard what counts:

  • Determine appropriate risk reduction strategies, remedies, and alternatives for critical systems and networks, including affordable ways to address voice and data protection measures like off-grid power sourcing and secure off-site storage.
  • Enable a remote work program that can keep your business open when your office is shut down during an emergency.
  • Avoid critical data loss or recovery delays dealing with missing databases, disrupted systems, networks, and more.

And if you’re considering moving to the cloud, remember you don’t have to do it all at once.

Create a plan. Identify what should stay in-house and what should go to the cloud. Focus on what you’d need to operate if a major interruption or disaster occurred. Determine the connectivity your employees need to do their jobs remotely. Also, work toward consistent and seamless end-to-end communications. TCI can help you build a hybrid or full cloud solution that meets the needs you’ve identified.

The cloud gives your company the agility it needs to respond to any disruption, be it a natural disaster, pandemic, a security breach, or a failure of your network or hardware.

Schedule your Business Continuity Planning meeting today. Contact TCI at (703) 321-3030 or GetHelp@tcicomm.com.
 


Running a Multi-Site Enterprise? 5 Ways UCaaS Simplifies Connecting Your Locations

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A unified enterprise voice network connects your customers and employees, no matter where they’re located…

UCaaS also offers bottom line benefits by eliminating the need for expensive hardware and maintenance costs. With UCaaS, you can control your IT budget, while providing your team with advanced features and functions. You’ll also improve the customer experience, making your communications seamless and efficient.

Here are five ways UCaaS can benefit your multi-site enterprise:

  • Hybrid Work Environments – UCaaS provides full office telephone functionality and business information access to remote users and hybrid workers, no matter where they are located.
  • Hot Desking – UCaaS enables staff members who are working in different offices to take their desktop phone with them. All they need is a code to access their customized desktop settings, making communication easier and more convenient.
  • Business Continuity – With UCaaS, employees can access the system from any location and redirect incoming calls on demand in the case of any disruption at any office.
  • Extended Contact Centers – UCaaS allows businesses to extend their call center coverage to remote offices or home-based agents. Calls are automatically routed to the most appropriate person, team, or location to improve customer service.
  • Improved Call Handling – UCaaS can improve call routing between different locations. For instance, if salespeople are out of the office meeting clients, their calls can be redirected to a backup location.

If you lead a multi-location enterprise, UCaaS is the perfect solution to bring your people together, improve communication and collaboration, and save on costs.

TCI specializes in the design, deployment, and support of unified enterprise voice networks. Contact us today: (703) 321-3030 or GetHelp@tcicomm.com.

 

Strong Storms Are Rolling In… How Business Continuity Planning with TCI Helps Protect Your Business

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TCI’s cutting-edge Disaster Recovery solutions are tailored to help protect your entire technology environment – from data and applications to office computers, mobile devices, networks, and phone systems.

Will your business continue to operate when disaster strikes?

Here are just some of the ways TCI’s comprehensive approach helps you safeguard what counts:

  • Determine appropriate risk reduction strategies, remedies, and alternatives for critical systems and networks, including affordable ways to address voice and data protection measures like off-grid power sourcing and secure off-site storage.
  • Enable a remote work program that can keep your business open when your office is shut down during an emergency.
  • Avoid critical data loss or recovery delays dealing with missing databases, disrupted systems, networks, and more.

If you’re considering moving to the cloud, remember you don’t have to do it all at once.

Create a plan… Identify what should stay in-house and what should go to the cloud. Focus on what you’d need to operate if a major interruption or disaster occurred. Determine the connectivity your employees need to do their jobs remotely. Also, work toward consistent and seamless end-to-end communications. TCI can help you build a hybrid or full cloud solution that meets the needs you’ve identified.

The cloud gives your company the agility it needs to respond to any disruption, be it a natural disaster, pandemic, a security breach, or a failure of your network or hardware.

Schedule your Business Continuity Planning meeting. Contact TCI today at (703) 321-3030 or info@tcicomm.com.

 

Hurricane Season is Here… TCI Experts are Ready to Help Prepare Your Business Continuity Plan

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How Business Continuity planning with TCI helps protect your business…

First, our experts perform a thorough gap assessment to identify risks, threats and exposure before it’s too late. Then we recommend solutions and action plans to enable you to mitigate and effectively manage a crisis.

40% of small businesses who experience a disaster never recover…

TCI’s cutting-edge Disaster Recovery solutions are tailored to help protect your entire technology environment – from data and applications, to office computers, mobile devices, networks and phone systems.

Will your business continue to operate when disaster strikes?

Here are just some of the ways TCI’s comprehensive approach helps you safeguard what counts:

  • Determine appropriate risk reduction strategies, remedies, and alternatives for critical systems and networks, including affordable ways to address voice and data protection measures like off-grid power sourcing and secure off-site storage.
  • Enable a remote work program that can keep your business open when your office is shut down during an emergency.
  • Avoid critical data loss or recovery delays dealing with missing databases, disrupted systems, networks and more.

Make sure your business stays connected when disaster strikes. Contact us today at (703) 321-3030 or info@tcicomm.com

 

What Goes into an Effective Business Continuity Plan?

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A continuity plan can help your business survive all kinds of calamities. The right plan should feature clear-cut guidelines for what your organization must do to continue operations in case of an unforeseen event. It should leave no doubt about how to organize staff and move forward. It must also clearly demarcate the different types of responses depending on the severity of the emergency at hand.

Basic components of an effective business continuity plan

Outline the Goals and Objectives – Since every business is unique, first identify the objectives and goals that are most critical to the way your company operates. This goal-driven trajectory helps you reflect on the overall planning needs, potential recovery strategies, and risk assessment.

Establish a Team – Select competent cross-functional leaders or managers who can be a valuable addition to the team. Ensure you appoint someone as the lead to keep things going smoothly and make informed decisions when necessary.

Perform Business Impact Analysis and Risk Assessment – Identify the significant risks to your business. Discuss with your team and analyze the consequences of modifying, eliminating, or reducing essential functions or services in emergency conditions. Study all identified issues and their impact on the business.

Identify Predominant Ecommerce Related Business Functions – Determine how your company will effectively maintain its essential functions/services in case of an emergency. Here are some of the necessary functions and services that you will need to plan for:

  • Supply Chain and Inventory Management Continuity
  • Shipping Deadlines and Order Fulfillment
  • E-Commerce Platform Functionality
  • Maintaining Customer Service

Prepare a Plan for Necessary Services and Functions – Create unique plans to address the needs of stakeholders and essential functions during an emergency situation:

  • Customers
  • Suppliers/ subcontractors
  • Team members
  • Shipping
  • Inventory

Make sure you have plans to change your current supplier to ensure that you don’t have inventory limitations. Also, know your options in case your supply chain faces disruption.

Focus on Documentation and Reviewing

Ensure you have the following aspects in writing:

  • Business risk level
  • Impact on customers and employees
  • Financial resources in case of a calamity
  • Community partners or external organization who can help build a mutually beneficial relationship during a disaster

Present your continuity strategy/plan to your stakeholders, perform trial runs and be proactive. This allows you to identify any weaknesses or missing features. Once you make the necessary updates, start to train your staff, test, and revise accordingly.

TCI can help you select and implement disaster recovery and business continuity solutions to ensure your business stays connected and operational during any emergency. Contact us today at (703) 321-3030 or info@tcicomm.com.

 

 

Worried About Staying Connected? UCaaS Has You Covered!

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Any number of threats can take your business offline, including floods, road closures, and fires. Add to all that, a pandemic that suddenly changes where and how work is performed. When your people can’t work, your operations can come to a grinding halt and the collateral damage from your unexpected shutdown can be severe.

In addition to the pain of lost revenues, your customers may find alternative providers, your business could lose its place in supply chains, and your employees could experience  stress about their uncertain future.

Paying for expensive redundant services can help mitigate such calamities, but with Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) you’ll get a built-in Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery plan – without the extra cost.

Today’s voice systems and services are more powerful than ever and are designed to safeguard your business from a range of contingencies. As long as your team has UCaaS, smart phones and wireless data, and/or laptops with access to WiFi, they automatically have the essential elements of a DR plan.

Equipping your team members and contact center reps with their office tools and apps – as they seamlessly work from home – will enable your business to withstand virtually any local emergency that threatens to shut down your building.

Let’s get ahead of the next disaster before it arrives and talk about exploiting UCaaS for your business continuity plan. Contact TCI today: (703) 321-3030 or info@tcicomm.com.

 

 

Supporting DC Metro’s Non-profits & Associations with Technology Planning, Assessments & Bid Consultations

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TCI is your local, go-to partner for IT strategic planning…

Our experts will analyze your entire IT infrastructure including software, systems, processes, networks and applications. We then provide you with a comprehensive project plan that contains our recommendations. It is our goal to help you exploit the best technology to move your organization ahead and make managing IT easy.

Providing you with Assessments & Audits

Our technical assessments and audits help you better understand your organization’s current IT systems. An audit will let you know whether your network is operating at peak performance, what systems are hogging resources, whether your current IT strategy fits your business and more. We perform health checks for all of your systems while proactively searching for hidden problems. We’ll work with you to establish the kind of technology your organization needs and propose an IT budget to help you better understand all costs in advance.

Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery

We know the damage that can be done to an organization when disaster strikes. Our goal is to save you from headaches resulting from lost data, time and resources due to recreating a corrupt or missing database, disrupted systems and networks, and more. Accordingly, we identify risks, threats and exposure, and determine appropriate responses for systems and networks. This may include recommending data protection measures, off-grid power sourcing, and secure off-site storage. We also check the feasibility of implementing telework programs to keep your organization functioning during an emergency.

Procurement & Bid Consulting

We work with you to make sure you are getting exactly what you want from your telecommunication providers. We offer you improved savings through innovative price reduction and/or quantity discounts, speedier contract negotiation, reduced miscommunication, less chance of unexpected costs, and better outcomes. Our experts handle all the details from bid consulting and procurement to implementation and ongoing support.

Third Party Vendor Management

Our experts work to leverage well-established vendor relationships to secure prompt response to technical issues. We get your issues resolved quicker and your systems and networks back to proper operation faster. We’ll manage escalations, track progress, monitor vendor performance, and report changes in status to you. Most importantly, we maintain a line of communication with you to avoid misunderstanding and proactively address any issues at their onset.

Project consulting and services you can rely on

Our team of consultants will learn about your organization and work with your team to plan projects and ensure that we meet your IT goals. We take away the stress and problems that can be a direct result of poor project planning by defining project success criteria along with major milestones and target dates for each. You get a clear statement of project objectives, costs and deliverables. Our negotiation and communication skills help keep projects moving forward and within budget.

TCI makes managing technology easy. Contact us today at (703) 321-3030 or info@tcicomm.com.

 

Snow Season is Here… Stay Connected When You’re Stuck at Home

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Providing employees with the ability to work remotely – with full access to their desktop voice and data and applications – has become an essential element of business continuity, especially in our area, where a winter snow blast can suddenly force streets and buildings to close.

With “plug and work” access to the voice and data network at the office, your team can use all of the features and functionality they need while at home or on the road, allowing your business to keep going until everyone can return to the office.

TCI makes it easy to set up remote Voice and Data capabilities that can be used to keep your customers happy. You get immediate productivity and efficiency benefits, plus blizzard protection when you need it.

While competitors scramble to find alternatives until the snow clears, it is “business as usual” for you. To get started, contact our experts today at (703) 321-3030 or info@tcicomm.com.

 

Unified Communication as a Service… Move Your Voice to the Cloud – Get DR and BC at No Cost!

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Businesses are investing in Cloud Voice for a variety of reasons, including cost savings, mobility, scalability and the desire to shift financing from CAPEX to OPEX.

Others are taking Cloud Voice a step further – not only adopting UC as a Service (UCaaS) for its collaboration tools, but for its built-in disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity (BC) capabilities as well.

When you think of how important communications continuity is to your business, moving to UCaaS is a very smart move, especially when the platform already relies on a resilient cloud infrastructure. Trying to replicate this internally would require a redundant PBX and a duplicate cluster of UC servers at a backup location, in addition to paying monthly carrier fees to maintain network connections to that site.

Supporting Daily & Emergency Communications

When you incorporate UCaaS into your daily operations, you also cover your emergency communications. Using the same UCaaS tools for daily operations and disaster situations also means your users and IT staff won’t have to worry about getting familiar with a backup system in the middle of a crisis.

With UCaaS, no matter where you work or what device you use, you have access to the same set of collaboration and communication tools. When a local emergency shuts down your building, your team can work offsite without interruption. Communications continue seamlessly, regardless of the type or duration of the disaster.

Ready to put your built-in business continuity plan in place? Contact us today at (703) 321-3030 or info@tcicomm.com.