Blog

Should You Hire an IT Professional? As a business owner or manager, you can’t do it all…but sometimes you feel like you have to. Budgets need to stretch after all. However, your time is valuable too so hiring out for specialists in certain areas is important. Some choices are obvious....

Buy Local (is Good for Service Too!)   Most of us like the concept. Buy American has been popular for years but in the last decade “Buy local” gained a lot of traction. Towns exhibit this trend with Buy Local bumper stickers with the name of the town, farmers' markets,...

Many SPAM Calls Start with A Roundabout Meandering Introduction But I don't want any SPAM!   At the height of lockdown, Americans were streaming a lot of television. Although much new content was produced, viewer hunger tended to gravitate toward comfort food comedy nostalgia. And the number one program people...

More Business is Great! If You Can Handle it...   Across Virginia, pandemic restrictions have been winding down. Crowds have increased. We’re seeing fewer masks. Capacity limitations have been removed. And with the restriction wind down has come a pick-up in business. Having additional customers is always a positive development!...

If You Don't Have Simple Voicemail, You're Probably Not Using It to Its Fullest Potential Have you ever received a letter or bill addressed to your home address but to a person who doesn't live there? Addresses don't move with people and sometimes updating a particular company or even friend...

Isn't Cybersecurity Fun? If you are a regular reader of the RCI blog, you may notice that today’s blog is a little late. Why? Our site was down earlier in the week. Why? The host of our site, one of the leading hosting sites in the world was having “connectivity...

Call Logging We’ve all been there. You hang up with a customer and say, “Gee, I wish I recorded that.”  Maybe things went poorly. Maybe you’re having a difficult time remembering a date, time, or name. Maybe you need a coworker or supervisor to weigh in on something and you...

Choosing an IT Company Choosing an IT company is the most important tech decision you'll make. Good help is hard to find... Its hard to find companies that will take good care of you. That's true whether you’re selecting a pediatrician for your child, your regular lunch spot or a...

Safety First? Well, not always it seems... Not Safe workplace Tech   Safe Workplace Technology The old adage “Safety First” is a good one to live by.  But at work, sometimes safety can take a back seat to profit or efficiency. It’s not alway deliberate negligence (to coin an oxymoron)....

The 7 Business Telephone Users RCI has been in business providing and servicing telephone equipment in the greater Roanoke Valley, Southwest and Central Virginia for over 40 years. When you’ve been in business that long you come to know customer needs. Every business telephone user is different but you come...

Cell Phone Integration for Business Communication Cell Phone Integration Has Become Essential for Business Communication Cell Phone Integration Is Now Essential Can you hear me now? Like it or not, cell phones have become ubiquitous in our lives. As unexpected disconnections, excessive clipping and garbled audio became commonplace and an...

Is it Time For a New Telephone System ? ESI E-SIP Series Phone Systems With Cell Phone Integration   Eventually, almost everything wears out: motors, elastic waist bands, couches and even phone systems. Take good care of everything and will take good care of you for as long as possible...

The Benefit of Managed IT Contracts How to Waste Time and Aggravate People? How much time do you waste on IT problems every week? How about your employees? How about your least tech-savvy employee? Got an answer in mind? The average employee wastes 22 minutes a day or 110 minutes...

4 Mistakes Companies Make with Telework It's Not Just Reminding Employees to Wear Pants! We’re all working differently these days. Some of us in person. Some at home. Some of us at finding something new.  We all have our own challenges. Today we’re addressing the mistakes employers and employees can...

4 Areas for Business Technology Resolutions in 2021 Happy New Tech Year! Before we talk about any business technology resolution, let's start with a collective sigh of relief. It’s 2021 and like the beginning of most years, there is still a lot to clean up from the previous year. But...

Why Upgrade Now? Everything is cyclical. Life, fashion, health, nature, seasons and business. You may have heard in a religious text or a 60s pop song that “to everything there is a season.” We’re currently taking an ironic turn (turn, turn) as while nature is entering it’s spring, the economy...

Thinking About Telework? For years now, employers and employees have been touting the benefits of telecommuting. In fact in the past decade telecommuting has gone up over 90 percent! Telework has been an upward trend in the last decade for many reasons - happier employees, saving money for companies, lowering...

Surveillance Myths   We all face anxiety from time to time…or all the time. Anxiety comes from the unknown and unknowable. As a business person, you may have anxiety over profits, employee retention, marketing or something particular to your own business. One place many business owners or managers face stress...