I’m sure many of you are also doing this, but I just completed my goal review for 2012. Now, I’m gearing up to make 2013 even more fun, successful, and disciplined!
One of DE’s biggest success secrets from 2012 was the introduction of a dashboard. It serves as a scoreboard for the entire team to see “how we’re doing” as a company. Based on this dashboard, we created a daily cadence for our team and clarified, measurable expectations.
So, what exactly is a Dashboard?
It’s a custom computer program that pulls data from different sources then calculates and displays our performance metrics. Basically, it’s an instantly updated “goal progress window” that we display on big monitors in our office for all to see.
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Is there ever a good time to spend money on computers? Maybe not, but there are certainly “better” times.
December is the traditional time when many businesses look for ways to spend some of the extra cash they made during the previous 11 months to minimize upcoming tax bills. If your fiscal calendar ends on 12/31, consider improving your team’s efficiency with new equipment by refreshing some of your business’s laptops, workstations, or servers.
January is actually the best time of the entire year to buy Dell equipment. Dell operates on a traditional retail fiscal year. That means their business calendar runs from Feb 1 to Jan 31 to capture all of the additional holiday spending in December. Dell devotes most of January to booking as many sales as possible to end their year strong. This means better deals for their customers. (This is based on my past 13 years of purchasing experience so I don’t think it’s just an anomaly!) If you have equipment over 4 years old, you should strongly consider some new equipment sooner rather than later and January promises the best deals. (Dell also has better pricing at the end of their quarters which are April, July, and October.)
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UPDATE 1-4-2012: Users are now receiving this same invoice attached to an email.
ATTN Dynamic Edge Clients and Friends:
Some of our clients have received a phony invoice from “DNS Services” in the mail. These are physical letters, not emails.
It is one of the more convincing scams we have seen in a while, though very lo-tech. They list your domain name, company name, the names of your webservers, a phony account number, and their web address on the mailer. The website they direct you to lets you “check your account”, then tells you payment has not been received.
Websites should be rebuilt minimum every 3 to 5 years. Next time you get yours redone, make sure your web designer builds in a CMS like the one pictured here. A Content Management System, or CMS, allows anyone who can use a simple program like Microsoft Word create web pages and update content online—without having to pay a web designer hourly.
Benefits of a Content Management System:
Here’s yet another scam to be aware of. This has been going on for a while but it appears there’s been a recent spike in incidents.
One of our clients was recently tricked by a scam like this:
Someone calls your phone, probably from a blocked number, and they probably have an Indian accent, according to the reports we have heard so far. It’s important to remember it won’t always be so obvious, though. Some of these people can be very convincing. It’s their job to trick you.
Next, he/she will tell you they are from Microsoft and they are calling about some errors on your computer.
We have heard that the scammer will act very concerned, demanding, and even threatening about these supposed problems with your computer. They will try to create urgency and panic to get you to act without thinking.
Viruses are more sophisticated and causing more damage than ever. Most viruses people are downloading today can’t be removed. The only way to “fix” them is to restore your computer from a back-up that was taken before you caught the virus. Without a good back-up, these viruses are essentially death sentences.
There is no antivirus program that can prevent this new class of targeted attack, because when you agree to download a file or enter your information, you are bypassing the antivirus all together. So once again, we stress, the only way to protect yourself is to learn how to recognize a scam when you see it.
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