In the last 70 years, office technology has seen quite a bit of change, going from largely typewriters, copiers, telephones and switchboards, to now computers, mobile devices, networks, VoIP phone systems, all-in-one copiers and everything in between.
As an office technology company serving businesses since 1952, RK Black has not only seen these changes, but has been a provider of such technologies for businesses along the many years — first dealing in copiers but growing and adapting to now provide most of the technologies needed for today’s business environment.
RK Black: From copiers to managed IT services
One area of business technology maybe having seen the most growth over the last few decades has been the area of IT. Businesses and their offices are increasingly dependent on information systems and related technology and as that is where office technology has gone, so have we in providing IT solutions to our clients.
So while we may be known to you as your copier company, we wanted to let you know we are much more than that — we are an office technology provider and more and more, a provider of IT solutions.
Your Managed IT Services Provider
If you are struggling to maintain your network infrastructure, we have a solution for you: a comprehensive managed IT services program which will provide you and your team with the technology and expertise to empower your business.
RK Black is a full support outsourced managed services provider, able to build and support your network for a fixed monthly rate in a way that makes sense for your organization, both in cost and efficiency.
So what does full support mean? Here’s what:
Design & Installation — All-encompassing network solutions for your unique situation
Protection — Antivirus defense bundled into your subscription
Backup — Automated data backup snapshots of company data throughout the day
Disaster Recovery – The ability to restore information in the event of data loss
Business Continuity — An offsite-clone of your IT infrastructure ready within minutes of a system failure
VoIP Phone Systems— Software-based scalable PBX without the extra wiring and hassle, but bringing your office(s) up-to-date with mobile device integration, video conferencing capabilities and more, all while lowering your costs.
Cloud Solutions – Hosted infrastructure options for any business
Support — Expert assistance from our Oklahoma City-based staff of professionals
Monitoring — Real-time remote inspection of your systems to detect and prevent problems
Fixed Rate — One low, predictable monthly fee for all your IT needs
It means better Mondays, more productivity, happier employees and higher revenues for you.
As our company’s tagline says: “Technology Solutions That Work,” we make technology do the work so you can work too.
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Contact Us
If you are interested in talking with us about implementing a managed IT solution for your organization, click the button below or call 405-943-9800.
Working from home definitely has its perks, better coffee (no pun intended), no commute, no messing with meal prep, and, well, just being able to work from the comfort of your own house, just to name a few.
However, as more and more people are finding out, working from home definitely has its drawbacks too — especially if the work requires internet connectivity. As we are finding out from some of our clients, while they may have made the transition to a remote workforce fairly smoothly, home-grade internet service and business-grade service are different things.
Home Internet Isn’t Office Internet
Home internet service tends to be slower than the business-grade variety. But more, the internet service reaching your computer is not dedicated to you as it may have been at the office. Anytime anyone in your house uses the internet, whether to stream videos (Netflix, YouTube, etc.), to play online games, video chat or so on, it uses some of your already limited bandwidth. Tack on your smart thermostats, digital assistants, connected appliances and you can start to see a pinch.
For the remote worker, this means slower file upload and download rates, sluggish page loads, laggard web conference streaming, pokey email service and so on — not exactly conducive to performing a full day’s work.
3 Tips for Better Internet Connectivity
So how do you fix this? Three options: Limit the load on your internet service, upgrade your internet service or use your smartphone as a hotspot.
Limit the load
Do an assessment of the more essential of your internet uses. Maybe you don’t need your digital assistant sapping WiFi during working hours, or for that matter, your connected TV running old Star Trek episodes on Netflix for background noise. Also, maybe have a chat with the kids about when to use their AR/VR home gaming system.
Upgrade your service
It comes as a given, but getting faster service will most definitely help. More bandwidth means you don’t have to sacrifice productivity or or your various connected devices and services, but you may have to be ready to offer up some more cash. It may be worth it to you! Check for fiber, satellite, cable and DSL available to your area.
Use your mobile hotspot
Another option, though potentially expensive, is to use your smartphone to conduct your online business when you are in a real pinch. Check with your provider to see the data rates and fees, but it may be worth it to you.
Hopefully these tips will help you better and more productively work from home. The bright side is, at least it’s not the 90s when you had to ask the kids to get off the phone so you could use your dial-up connection for online business.
All good things must come to an end and such is the case for Google Cloud Print — Google’s cloud-based printing solution.
Google to end Google Cloud Print support
November of last year, Google announced their intent to discontinue support of Google Cloud Print, a utility that allows users to connect their home and work printers to the web, making it possible to print from anywhere using any Internet-connected device, inclusive of smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices.
As such, beginning on Jan. 1, 2021, devices across all platforms will not be able to use Cloud Print.
Don’t worry! Google offers alternatives
So for those of you using Google Cloud Print and wondering what to do, don’t worry! There are some options, one of which, we at RK Black specialize in.
Here’s the scoop …
While Google recommends a number of various alternatives to Google Cloud Print, among them some native printing options as well as solutions provided by third-party cloud-printing providers, they specifically point to PaperCut’s Mobility Print utility.
Check out PaperCut Mobility Print as a Google Cloud Print alternative
With PaperCut Mobility Print, you can easily discover and set up printers, regardless of the operating system or device manufacturer. It works in mixed environments of Chrome, Mac, Windows or Android operating systems, mobile or PC. What’s more is that it’s free!
While the fact that PaperCut Mobile Print is free is always good, what is better is the fact Google recommends it. It speaks volumes that Google chose PaperCut.
We all agree that it is great that PaperCut Mobile Print is offered at no charge! What makes it even better is that Google chose PaperCut because their platform offers additional, valuable options that allow fleet management, user and device management and cost cutting controls.
The truth is that no one helps manage print in any environment like PaperCut. Their offerings are leading the industry when it comes to simplifying processes, improving productivity, cutting print costs and allowing simple yet robust management of devices and users throughout an organization.
Talk to us
RK Black is a Premier Papercut Partner in Oklahoma and Kansas and has more trained/certified team members than any other dealer in either state. So, if you need help with setting up Papercut Mobile Print as a replacement for the outgoing Google Cloud Print, we can help you with that and more! Just reach out to us or to me specifically, and we’ll give you a hand.
If you are like most people, when Friday roles around, you are so glad it’s the end of the week and are doubtless looking forward to a long restful weekend. It’s why there are such hashtags as #thatfridayfeeling, #fridaymood and #friyay. Hopefully, by the time Monday rolls around, you are refreshed and ready to tackle another week.
The feeling is probably similar, though smaller, every workday when the clock says 5 o’clock. You stop your work, head home and recharge.
Stop and think though. If you are working at a computer every day, when the clock rolls around to 5, do you just pack up and leave and let the computer go to sleep, or do you shut it down so it so it can rest too?
Believe it or not, just like you need your nightly rest, your PC or Mac need some shut-eye too, though much less than we humans do. It’s why we recommend you to restart your computer everyday.
Here are 3 reasons you should shut down and restart your computer every day.
Give it a clean slate
Closing all your applications and restarting your computer is the easiest way to help clear your RAM, freeing it of all those pesky background processes that weigh your PC down and giving it a clean slate to start on.
Allow it to update
Maybe the best reason to restart your machine is to protect it. Shutting down and restarting your PC and its applications gives your machine and its software a chance to load and install any needed updates.
Nowadays, with all of the security exploits so prevalent in the cyber space — not to mention the bugs that occur in operating systems and software — developers are constantly releasing patches and fixes, sometimes daily. It is during your restarts that many of these fixes are uploaded and installed, allowing your machine to run more smoothly, safely and securely.
If you just put your PC to sleep everyday, you may be opening your system up to be compromised. If that happens, the hassle of restarting your PC will be small in comparison to the trouble you will have if your machine gets hacked or infected.
Don’t be thrown off your groove
Doubtless you’ve had it happen to you: You’re typing away or are trying to run some numbers and suddenly you get the feared hourglass or pinwheel of death. The next thing you know, your application freezes or worse, crashes. If your didn’t save your work, it’s all lost and you’ve got to start over. Frustrating, isn’t it?
Save yourself the frustration and restart your machine at the end of the day, when you don’t have any applications open and no projects underway. You literally then have nothing to lose. So before you leave at your desk or before you start your day, save yourself some pain and restart the machine. You should not have to worry about it dropping out on you partway through the day.
So before you #peaceout for the day or #friyay for the weekend, give your computer a chance to rest, reboot, clear its RAM, update and make your Monday and every workday a smoother and happier one.
When it comes to network services, lots of businesses take a seat on the fence to decide which field is greener, assembling an in-house team to manage their networks or to outsourcing to an IT services provider?
Each option offers its own advantages and disadvantages, but there’s a third option? What if you could enjoy the best of two … well … fields, to continue the analogy?
Good news! You can! But before we go into that, let’s discuss the advantages and disadvantages of in-house and outsourced IT.
In-house network services
With this option, your organization has its own team to handle all its needs. The team knows you and it knows your needs. Their job is to keep your company up and running, to be constantly watching your networks and to tweak your IT infrastructure to run at its optimum. They are there — literally in-house — when and where you need them.
The main challenge here is the expense. If you are a small to medium-sized company, the cost of such a team and their services can be a bit much. We’re talking, salaries, benefits, FICA and then, of course, your infrastructure’s hardware, software, maintenance and subscription costs. All of that can be overwhelming. That’s why many organizations go the outsourcing route.
Outsourced network services
With this option, as the name implies, your organization hires an outside team to support your network infrastructure. Now, what that support looks like depends on what kind of service you hire — whether that is a “break/fix IT” or a managed network services solution.
For a better breakdown on the difference between the two, click here, but simply, with a break/fix service, your IT company only shows up when you need something or when something bad happens. While this may seem like the cheapest IT services option, it’s like the expression — back to the farming analogies — closing the stable door after the horse has bolted.
With managed IT services, your IT company, using monitoring and other services, 24/7 proactively works to prevent bad things from happening to your network infrastructure and keep it running at its top efficiency. In fact, under such a program, your IT company will not only be addressing issues before you are even aware of them, depending on the extent of your service, if your network does go down, they’ll have a virtual safety net in play to have your company up and running with little to no downtime at all.
If your organization is small and not very network dependent, a break/fix solution might be the best and the least expensive option for you. But if the stability of your network infrastructure is vital to your organization’s needs, while more expensive than break/fix, a managed IT solution may save you money in downtime in the long run.
In-house augmented by outsourced IT
Let’s say you want or already have an in-house IT team (maybe even consisting of one person), but you want some of the advantages that come with outsourced managed IT services, either just to give your company a safety net, to free up your network guy to do the other IT-related tasks or some other reason.
Well, to borrow another expression, you can have the cake and eat it too! You can do both.
Many managed IT services companies, like RK Black, are happy to have such an arrangement with organizations. This allows you to keep that personal IT service intrinsic with having an in-house IT team, but also the proactive action, protection and business continuity systems offered by managed IT services providers, but without the expense of a large staff, hardware, labor hours and knowledgebase you would need have the same fully in-house.
Summary
To go back to the beginning of the article, by augmenting your in-house IT team with the services of an outsourced managed IT services provider, you don’t need to sit on the fence to decide which field is greener. You get both fields with a gate in the fence between, so you can use either field when you need it.
If your new hire needs their desk computer and monitor set up and linked to the network, your in-house IT people can handle that. If your network goes down, we’ll have your data all backed up and will have you set up on a virtual network, so you so can keep on chugging.
See, you can come off the fence now and just open the gate, because both fields are yours if you want them.
Have you ever bought a service or a subscription only to find yourself alone after you handed over the money or signed the contract? Sure, you may have what you paid for, which is great, but you don’t know its ins and outs and how to get the most out of it.
Or worse, you try to use your new gizmo, to use some function … and it’s just not happening. And you don’t know how to make it work or who to contact.
It’s frustrating, isn’t it?
RK Black is not that kind of company. When you get a service from us, you get a whole company that stands behind that service and multiple layers of support to help you get the most out of it — whether that service is managed voice (VOIP business phones) or copiers or printers or what-not.
Here are a few measures we’ve put in place so you will not feel alone with your service:
RK Black How-to Videos
YouTube How-to Videos
Technology is cool but these days it can get very complicated very quickly. All of those buttons, action pathways, options and on some devices — like copiers and printers — the touchscreens, panels, trays, knobs, levers, tabs, flashing lights and noises can be quite overwhelming. That’s why we’ve produced and YouTube-published a number of how-to videos.
Did you contract with us for our VOIP business phone system and need to know how to check your voicemail? Here. We’ve got you covered.
Is your Ricoh copier yelling at you, saying you need to change it’s waste toner bottle? Here. We’ll show you how to change that out..
Is your Sharp copier leaving lines on your copies? Try this to get rid of them.
You can access our whole collection of videos — 48 so far! —from here: https://www.rkblack.com/pages/how-to-videos.
While we may not have videos for everything we do, we did what we could do to help you out with the issues we think you are most likely to encounter.
RK Black Dispatch
Real. Live. Human. Service.
If you’re having an issue with our technology and the videos don’t help out or cover the issue or you just simply have got to have a solution, you’ve got us — you know the real human beings. That means if you contact us during our business hours, you’ll get a human answering you — not some automated voice sending you on a numeric scavenger hunt, the prize being a prerecorded message asking you to leave a message.
Yes, you’ll get a person and they’ll get you on the road to getting you the help you need — whether that means setting up a help desk appointment with a real live human to help you resolve the problem or sending a real live human to your location. And if you don’t want to talk to a human, we have another option for you.
Online Customer Portal
Thanks to our new online “Customer Portal,” clients will be able to make payments, view invoices, see payment histories, view account summaries, set up service calls and supply orders, enter meter readings and more — all from the rkblack.com website.
Clients can view the portal from the home page of our website by selecting “Customer Portal” from the dropdown menu under “Contact” or by selecting “Customer Portal” next to “Contact” at the bottom of the website. They can also simply go to rkb.rkblack.com.
To use the portal, clients with their account numbers ready can navigate to the portal and click “Sign Up Now” in the Client Login box. From there, a screen will then ask for an account number. Once this number is entered, clients will be able to set up their login credentials and have access to the portal.
Help Desk
Sometimes our technology doesn’t sync with your technology or network. You may be having network and copier connectivity difficulties, problems with printing, issues with scanning or other matters — snags that can be fixed with some simple instructions over the phone. For those issues, we’ll put you in contact with our help desk. They’ll be happy to walk you through how to rectify your situation.
Sales Team
You know the people that sold you the technology? They are your training and support resource too. Just as they showed you the various features of your service or device before you signed, they’ll walk you through how to make full use of those functions and features so you’ll be glad you signed.
The same hand that passed you the contract is the same hand that will help you in a pinch. If you have a question about your device, you don’t know how to do something or there’s a problem, give your rep a call. They know your account, your unique situation and your technology. They’ll help you out.
Summary
To sum it up, from the point you choose RK Black, you’re not alone anymore. You’ve a got a family. We’ve got your back. You’ve got our ear and you’ve always got a helping hand.
