Technology is the engine driving success in our community. From managing daily operations to engaging customers, reliable IT is no longer optional. Keeping that engine finely tuned—ensuring hardware, software, and networks are always up-to-date—presents a significant challenge. Technology evolves at lightning speeds, and managing it can feel like a constant, resource-draining battle, pulling you away from focusing on your core business.

Is your current IT setup empowering your growth, or is it quietly creating risks that could derail your progress? Many businesses operate with technology that feels "good enough," unaware of the hidden dangers lurking beneath the surface.

The High Cost of Falling Behind

Holding onto outdated IT infrastructure might seem like a cost-saving measure, but the reality is far different. Aging technology's hidden costs and risks can significantly impact your security, productivity, and bottom line.

Mounting Security Vulnerabilities: Older hardware and software often lack vendor support and miss critical security updates, making them prime targets for cybercriminals. A staggering 60% of data breaches exploit known, unpatched vulnerabilities. For a small or medium-sized business in British Columbia, the financial fallout from a breach can be devastating, averaging nearly $3 million, not to mention the damage to your reputation and potential compliance failures.

Productivity Drain: How much time do your employees lose to slow computers, software crashes, or system failures? Outdated technology is a major productivity killer, potentially reducing efficiency by as much as 40%. Due to maintenance and performance issues, older PCs alone can account for over 20 hours of lost productivity per employee annually. This constant struggle doesn't just impact output; it breeds frustration and can even affect employee morale and retention.

Innovation Barriers: Aging systems often struggle to integrate with modern software, cloud services, and productivity tools. This incompatibility prevents you from adopting new technologies that streamline workflows, improve collaboration, and give you a competitive edge. Your competitors might already be leveraging these tools, so it’s essential to keep up and surpass them in any way possible.

The In-House IT Treadmill: A Difficult Path for Businesses

Some British Columbia businesses attempt to manage IT updates and maintenance internally. While the intention is good, this approach often creates its own set of significant hurdles.

Keeping pace requires deep expertise across diverse and rapidly changing fields like cybersecurity, network management, and cloud technologies… a breadth of knowledge difficult for a small internal team to maintain. Furthermore, the time commitment is substantial. Regularly researching, testing, scheduling, and deploying updates, alongside routine maintenance and troubleshooting, pulls valuable time away from strategic initiatives and core business functions. Often, internal teams find themselves stuck in a reactive "break-fix" cycle, constantly putting out fires instead of proactively preventing them.

The financial burden is also considerable. Hiring, training, and retaining even one skilled IT professional involves significant costs, including salary, benefits, and ongoing training, easily exceeding $88,000-$120,000 annually. Add the necessary investments in specialized management tools like monitoring software and Mobile Device Management (MDM), which can carry hefty upfront and ongoing costs.

On top of all this, when things go wrong, the cost of downtime adds up alarmingly fast: potentially thousands of dollars per minute.

We’ll Be Your Proactive IT Partner

This is where Coleman Technologies steps in. As a dedicated Managed Service Provider (MSP) here in British Columbia, we shift your IT management from a reactive burden to a proactive, strategic advantage. We take the complex, time-consuming task of keeping your technology up-to-date entirely off your shoulders.

Our approach is built on proactivity:

Managed Updates and Patch Management: We handle the complete update lifecycle. Our team identifies necessary software and system patches, rigorously tests them for compatibility, and schedules deployment across your servers, workstations, and applications at times that minimize disruption. This ensures your systems remain secure against known threats and perform optimally.

Hardware Lifecycle Management: We don't wait for critical hardware like servers or laptops to fail unexpectedly. We proactively assess your equipment, track warranties and lifecycles (typically recommending replacement cycles of 3-5 years for key devices ), and develop a strategic replacement plan. We manage the procurement, configuration, and deployment, ensuring you always have reliable, secure, and efficient hardware supporting your business.

24/7 Proactive Monitoring: Our advanced tools constantly monitor the health and performance of your IT infrastructure. We often detect and resolve potential issues before they impact your operations, significantly reducing the risk of costly downtime.

Partnering with Coleman Technologies brings tangible benefits to your British Columbia business: enhanced security posture through expert management and multi-layered protection, improved system reliability and performance, predictable IT costs through a fixed monthly fee, and access to our entire team of certified specialists for less than the cost of a single senior in-house hire. Most importantly, we free you and your team to focus on what you do best: running and growing your business.

Focus on Your Business, We'll Handle the Tech

Keeping your IT infrastructure current, secure, and efficient is non-negotiable in today's business environment, but it doesn’t have to be your burden. Coleman Technologies provides the expertise, proactive management, and peace of mind you need. Let us handle the complexities of technology updates, cybersecurity, and lifecycle management so you can concentrate on achieving your business goals right here in British Columbia.

Ready to take IT worries off your plate? Contact Coleman Technologies today for a no-obligation IT assessment for your business. Let's discuss how we can keep your technology current, secure, and working for you. Call us at (604) 513-9428.

Coleman Technologies Blog

We can give your organization comprehensive IT services and 24/7/365 live support for a predictable monthly fee. Stop stressing about technology, and start focusing on growing your business.

Three of the Best Reasons Why VoIP Should Be On Your Radar

Wednesday, 16 April 2025

VoIP, or Voice over Internet Protocol, is great. It can be a pivotal tool to help you transform your business’ communications infrastructure, provided you implement it with intention. Today, we want to share three of the biggest benefits your business can expect to enjoy from switching to a VoIP solution.

Real and Significant Cost Savings

There are loads of cost savings associated with VoIP, all without losing out on quality.

VoIP uses your Internet connection instead of your traditional telephone infrastructure to make and receive calls, meaning that you can effectively bypass the expensive charges for long-distance and other extra features. Furthermore, most telephone providers bundle services you don’t need into your phone bill, leading to higher costs for your business. Meanwhile, VoIP lets you consolidate your bill into a predictable, consistent charge while also allowing you to make greater use of your Internet connection (which, let’s face it, you’re already paying for anyway).

You’ll find the charges on your monthly phone bill to be substantially lower due to implementing VoIP.

Greater Flexibility and Scalability

Again, VoIP uses your Internet connection, meaning it’s free from the constraints of your traditional telephone lines, allowing for greater flexibility and scalability.

Provided you have an Internet connection for a smartphone, laptop, or desktop, you can take calls from pretty much anywhere and on any connected device. This makes working remotely or taking calls while traveling significantly easier and more convenient. You can also scale your VoIP solution to suit the needs of your business as it grows; all you have to do is install the app on a device, create an account, and get to work.

With such scalability and flexibility at your disposal, your business has significant pricing control over how much (or how little) it will pay for its phone solution.

More Features Than You Know What to Do With

VoIP takes advantage of all kinds of other features to create a rich user experience for all.

In addition to the services you’ve come to expect, like voicemail, call forwarding, conference calling, and so on, you can leverage rich media features to get more out of your calls. Whether you want to video chat with a prospect or send instant messages to other individuals in your workplace, a VoIP feature enables that option. Of course, the flexibility of features is felt here, too, as you only pay for what you want and need.

Still, VoIP promises to be an incredible investment for any business ready to say goodbye to its traditional telephone system.

It might sound too good to be true, but we can assure you that VoIP is the real deal. It can revolutionize your telephony systems and bring you into the current generation of business technology. To learn more about how to get started, give us a call at (604) 513-9428.