It’s important that small businesses recognise the value of good IT support. It is a critical part of ensuring your IT continues to work as expected, and will help you to realise a return on the investment you’ve made in your IT infrastructure.
Hardware and network maintenance
Without regular maintenance and monitoring, the probability that something will go wrong increases.
Effective maintenance of your systems doesn’t mean simply responding to problems as they occur; there is a need to proactively monitor for and address potential problems before their impact becomes more severe.
However, there is also a need for routine ‘housekeeping’ alongside preventative measures, such as deleting unused user profiles or freeing up disk space.
While you may need to prioritise other aspects of your business on a day-to-day basis, routine maintenance must not be overlooked. If you are unable to address the need, due to a lack of time or other resource, this is where getting professional assistance can pay off.
On-demand access to support
When something goes wrong with your equipment, having speedy access to an expert on the end of the phone is exactly what you need to minimise business disruption.
This is where the option to outsource your IT support to an expert can be an obvious advantage. It will provide you and your staff with peace of mind when a problem cannot be fixed by referring to a troubleshooting guide.
If necessary, support staff may also attend on-site to resolve an issue if it cannot be solved over the phone or through remote desktop access.
Disaster recovery
Imagine losing all your data and not being able to recover it. How would your business cope?
We all hope and believe it won’t happen, but if a fire, flood, theft or catastrophic hardware failure does occur at your place of work, and IT hardware is seriously affected, the ability to get back on your feet as quickly as possible is crucial.
For this to happen, a regularly tested and updated disaster recovery policy is needed. With IT experts on your side to oversee this aspect of your IT strategy, you will be able to effectively mitigate against a worst-case scenario.
Security and data protection
For a small business, breaches of network security and privacy legislation can be devastating for your bottom line and professional reputation.
Developments in these areas are also fast-moving: technology used to compromise networks is becoming more elaborate and innovative, while cybersecurity measures and laws must adapt to meet evolving threats.
Ensuring your hardware and software is up to date, secure, and capable of handling data correctly is a significant undertaking, but one that an experienced IT support team can take off your hands and deal with cost effectively behind the scenes.
Training and optimisation
You could have state-of-the-art PCs loaded with advanced software, but if the workforce isn’t using the technology effectively, the value of that investment will be negated.
Staff training should be factored in when considering your business’ approach to IT acquisition and support. Outsourcing to an experienced IT support team may provide a solution, as they may be ready and able to pass on their knowledge to your team.
Among others, consider upskilling and reinforcing best practices for:
- using equipment and software packages
- passwords and network security
- data and storage
- collating information
Design and strategy
While standardisation of hardware, software and networking equipment and practices ensures consistent quality, it isn’t necessarily the case that the way in which these elements are combined must be the same across all implementations.
It is useful to be able to build customised infrastructure for the diverse needs of differing businesses and industries.
If your IT support team has a clear idea of what your business ambitions are, as well as your budget, timeframe, limitations, and friction points, they can ensure you have an IT system that will help you to meet your strategy, within budget and according to the brief.
This in turn can help with cashflow planning, and business development as you will have a good idea of what costs will need to be incurred when, and what it will be possible to achieve with your technology.
Cost savings
Not having focused, professional IT support is a false economy. It is often cost-efficient, saving you money across the medium- and long-term, when balanced against the costs of dealing with issues that are likely to arise without intervention.
In addition, optimised systems that drive efficiency and productivity can help improve your bottom line.
Outsourcing small business IT support to professionals
For years, Micro Maintenance has partnered with small- and medium-sized organisations across Surrey and Sussex to offer the full range of their expertise and experience in implementing, managing and optimising IT solutions.
We’ve also successfully supported businesses by providing the knowledge and skill needed to help them maintain their IT investment and ensure maximum and continued value.
Outsourcing IT support to us keeps your systems safe, secure, and resilient, allowing your business to focus on reaching its goals.
For an initial conversation about how we can bolster your business IT, get in touch today.
