Horne & Benik Networks Blog

We talk about VoIP like it’s a magic bullet for small businesses—and it often is. But here is the catch: it is not a set-it-and-forget-it solution. To get the actual value out of your investment without driving your employees and clients to the brink of frustration, you need precision and planning.

If you are looking to upgrade your communications, here are three critical implementation hurdles you need to clear to ensure your transition is seamless.

One of the inevitabilities of starting and operating a successful business is that your IT infrastructure will eventually outgrow itself. While you might have been able to start operations with just a couple of people, the same network that used to work just fine is likely bowing under the stress of additional employees and workstations. If you want to build a sustainable and reliable infrastructure, it’s best that you rely on experts who can help your company stay as competitive as possible, regardless of how much you grow.

We’re sure that even your most talented employees have tasks on their plate that make them feel like expensive data-entry clerks. This is known as the “tedium tax,” and it can have a very real impact on small businesses (especially when employees wear multiple hats). When you have multiple tools that don’t speak well with each other, and you’re forced to resort to manual data entry, your team starts to act like a “human bridge,” connecting these isolated apps themselves—and wasting a lot of time in the process.

Not all artificially intelligent tools are built the same. One disparity that can make all the difference is whether a particular tool you and your team use is public or private.

Let’s dive into the distinction and why it matters so much.

Have you ever looked at your technology bills and thought, “All I do is spend money on technology. It never actually makes me money.” This mindset is what keeps businesses trapped, seeing technology as a necessary evil and a cost center rather than a source of innovation and inspiration. But what if your technology was built in a way that accommodated scale and growth?

Our primary goal is to carry the burden of technical risk so you can focus on your business’ growth. The nature of that risk has fundamentally shifted. In 2026, the ghosts in the machine that used to haunt office managers and CEOs have been largely exorcised by AI-driven automation and resilient cloud architecture.

The manual labor of the past has been replaced by strategic oversight. Here are five legacy IT headaches you can officially stop worrying about.

For technology professionals, working with small businesses (SMBs) is often a balance of high-stakes problem-solving and strategic frustration. While technology has become more accessible, the gap between having the tools and using them correctly remains a primary point of contention. Let’s go through four considerations the IT pros are pressing as they enter 2026.

At its core, your business exists to provide value to your clients. While technology often feels like a behind-the-scenes necessity, it is actually the engine that drives your customer experience. By optimizing your internal operations with the right tools, you don't just work faster; you serve better.

In storytelling, there’s a structure that the vast majority of stories follow, regardless of the format: introduction, rising action, conflict, falling action, resolution. The rising action and the conflict are what give the story its appeal—they’re the source of all the tension that keeps things moving forward. They’re where the stress and the drama live; they keep the story interesting.

That said, when it comes to your business (and its IT in particular), you want its story to break this format. You want things to be, for lack of a better term, boring.

“Persuasion.” “Percussive Maintenance.” Whatever you call hitting your computer to make it work, we get it. We’ve all been there. Your Wi-Fi router drops the signal for the third time during a meeting, or your TV remote decides to go on strike. In a fit of frustration, you give it a firm slap; and miraculously, it starts working again.

The purpose of your business is to deliver goods or services to your target customers or clients. To this end, you can use technology to dramatically improve operations and create a better product for your consumers. Let’s discuss how you can use technology to build better internal practices to in turn create a better customer experience.

Few things in the office are as frustrating as Internet connectivity issues, right? The router is right there, you seem to have a strong Wi-Fi signal, but your virtual meeting keeps disconnecting. What gives?

The reason is simple: a signal’s strength isn’t the same as how much information can get through. The difference is key to focusing on the right metrics and—most importantly—ensuring your team can work the way they need to.

In IT services, we often use the iceberg analogy to describe the Internet. The Surface Web, the sites you browse daily, is just the 10 percent visible above the waterline. Below that lies the Deep Web,  and at the murky bottom is the Dark Web.

For a business owner, the Dark Web isn’t just a concept from a spy movie; it is a sophisticated, unregulated marketplace where your company’s data is the primary commodity (and target). If your information is down there, it’s not a matter of if someone will use it, but when.

Most businesses don’t have what it takes to survive a hardware failure or natural disaster, and we don’t mean in terms of “grit.” What we mean is in the sheer technological capacity to recover their data and continue operations. It’s bizarre, too, how easy data backup can be, provided you follow these three key tenets. With a little help from a qualified backup professional, your business can stay resilient even in the worst of times.

The conversation around B2B data security is no longer about having a backup, but about whether your backup actually works when you need it most. Data backup and disaster recovery solutions were once seen as “set it and forget it” tools, but this is no longer the case. In reality, your data backup strategy is much more complex, and if you fail to give it the attention it deserves, it could result in an extinction-level event for your business.

Sometimes the scariest part of running a business is not knowing what tomorrow will bring, particularly when it comes to your IT. Break-fix IT is one of the leading causes of anxiety amongst small business owners, but it doesn’t have to be. Managed IT offers a reprieve from the chaos and the unknown so you can be confident about the direction your business is heading.

Shadow IT is a big problem, no matter where it’s being used—even at the most famous toy manufacturer in history’s facility. Consider this a case study of why it is essential to listen to your IT department, especially when it comes to the tools they provide.

IT is more than a necessary expense; it’s a tool to get your business into a more advantageous position, one where you can make more money and help more people. The only way you can get to this point, however, is if your IT is yielding a return on your investment; otherwise, it will always feel like a money pit.

With the new year just around the corner, you’re probably wondering what the latest cybersecurity threats will have in store for small businesses like yours. One such threat is the rise of agentic AI, which capitalizes on the weakest link in any business’ cybersecurity infrastructure: its human elements. If you already have a hard time figuring out if the person on the other end of the phone line is human, just wait… It’s only going to get worse.

Nothing screams “Impressive!” quite like having locked-in email practices. If you want your boss to think you’re a top-tier employee, you want to keep your email inbox organized and managed. We’re here to help you do this through your Google Workspace Gmail account.