Posts written by:

Dave Monahan

Business IT Poison

March 10, 2011

Business IT problems are business poison. They are toxic. Not only do you have to spend resources dealing with them, but more importantly, you also have the opportunity cost(s) of what could have been accomplished with your business without these problems. These opportunity costs are so often overlooked at an incredible cost. Of course, this…

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Outsourced IT support – operational changes

February 17, 2011

In September, we made a very significant change to our business by partnering with LiveVHD and having them serve the “Tier 1” support role for our customers. All our reactive support requests go to them first and they are tasked with either completing the required work or escalating the work to our tier 2 support…

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Why IT companies exist

January 25, 2011

I couldn’t tell you how many times clients and prospects have prefaced their questions with statements like: I’m not very technically savvy… This is probably a stupid question, but… I really am not worthy of my computer… Etc This is understandable in one sense. Technology is everywhere and they are critically important for business. Opinions…

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A new year, a new email folder

January 11, 2011

I have been in business and (not surprisingly) using email for over 10 years. Let me assure you, I have participated in libraries-worth of email in that time. I necessarily make good use of email message folders in Microsoft Outlook and have found a useful way to organize things (perhaps a good topic for a…

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Technology adoption gaining momentum?

December 29, 2010

Imagine what it must be like to be in the trade of providing businesses with absolutely magical tools and to have them go essentially unused. Open up Word and just scan the various menus – do you know what half of that stuff does? What about Excel? Have you ever opened PowerPoint? See what I’m…

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Why you need an IT support company to manage IT complexity

December 22, 2010

Who was it that said technology was going to make our lives easier? Could it have been Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft until 2014? The number one benefit of information technology is that it empowers people to do what they want to do. It lets people be creative. It lets people be productive. It lets…

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Tech support job

December 17, 2010

Christmas. Birthdays. Blue moons. These things don’t come around all the time. Career opportunities at the best dang IT support company, they also don’t come around all the time. Don’t believe Smart Dolphins is a great place to work? Here is what Jesse Smith has to say about the experience: Smart Dolphins is a rare…

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Save the Data

December 8, 2010

Data loss incurred by Canadian organizations has grown exponentially since 2012. I am sure I do not need to use scare tactics to educate the business community about the importance of preserving irreplaceable data. We have all heard it. Many of us have lost data or at least had some kind of scare. So why…

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IT Partnership with LiveVHD (Virtual Help Desk)

November 12, 2010

In mid September, Smart Dolphins took a calculated leap that permanently and fundamentally changed our company for the better. We came to the realization that we could not be the best at running an efficient and effective help desk (the part of our team dedicated to servicing our common and relatively easier reactive computer support…

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Avoid a no-frills IT solution

November 5, 2010

I met with a good friend of mine (shall remain nameless) recently to discuss his very serious business challenge (opportunity). He needed a better way to track the productivity within his business and felt doing so would probably increase his profits by tens of thousands of dollars per year or maybe even a 6 digit…

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