While it might be terrifying to imagine a scenario in which your business were to suffer a devastating event that threatened its future, you as a responsible business owner must consider any and all possibilities. If you don’t, all of the hard work and investment you have made in your company could be for naught. Technology is one aspect of your company that must be examined with intense scrutiny and prepared for with preventative measures to keep your future secure.
There is no question that a small business can benefit from technology, as has been proven time and time again. However, an issue can arise if a business bites off more than it can chew, so to speak, and ultimately creates a spike in costs. A responsible business owner will resist this temptation and prioritize the solutions they need over the ones they want - building profitability and generating capital needed to make other improvements.
In this blog, we’ll examine some of the implementations that can deliver a good return on investment to a small business.
The late American author Kurt Vonnegut once wrote, “New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.” Written in the 20th century, it has been put in practice by 21st century businesses. As the Internet has grown, the amount of companies expanded, and the amount of data that those companies collect has grown exponentially, especially now that there is a market for such data.
Think of your business technology like a car. Sure, it’s a great way from getting from one location to another, but if it breaks down, you’re in big trouble financially. Even worse, you’re stuck without a vehicle for a certain amount of time. Can you imagine purchasing new hardware and losing precious productivity due to downtime?
Business owners have a lot to worry about. However, keeping workstations, server units, mobile devices, and various software solutions in good working order doesn’t have to be a concern--that is, if you outsource these responsibilities to the right IT professionals.
Identifying a qualified managed service provider can be challenging--especially if you don’t know what to look for. You should be able to gauge the worth of an IT provider based on a couple of key qualifications, just like you would if you were selecting an employee. What are some of the primary features that you want to look for in a managed service provider?
Technology has fundamentally altered the capabilities of businesses. Cloud computing has provided access to enterprise-strength computing at small business costs, and now IT providers are more able to provide value than simple repair-and-replace services. The name of the game is value, which is why the value-driven IT services of tomorrow are here to stay.
A business without its own IT department will expend vast amounts of time and resources to manage its technology. Tasks like managing your email solution, upgrading or managing your desktop infrastructure, or securing your network from threats, can be draining. If you don’t have time to perform these tasks, then it’s worth it to invest in an outsourced IT provider for your technology needs.
Many organizations are faced with an increasing need for technology maintenance like never before, and they are turning their attention toward third party technology management brought to them by managed service providers. At first, this proposition might sound a bit strange. It’s difficult to justify purchasing services when you can just do them yourself. However, you’ll find that the long-term cost savings will far outweigh any costs associated with managed IT, and you’ll save both time and resources that can instead go to better purposes.
In other words, rather than spend time managing your organization’s technology, you’ll be able to focus more on running your business.
Granted, there is the option of hiring an internal IT department. Although, after looking closely at this expense you may find that this move could eventually become much more of a long-term cost than investing in an outsourced managed service provider. Paying multiple salaries could easily become much more of a problem for your budget than a simple monthly payment to a managed service provider. It’s a simple choice, but you need to consider your business’s unique needs before making it.
Some organizations believe that managed IT means giving up control over your IT infrastructure, but this is simply false. A good managed IT provider like PCSOFT will make every effort to create a transparent, trusting relationship with your organization. We believe that cooperation is the key to unlocking your business’s full potential, and a proper technology strategy is the best place to start. A proactive technology policy will be able to help you keep your operational infrastructure in proper working order.
As a managed service provider, PCSOFT offers the following services for your business:
Does your business want to leverage technology to the best of its ability? If so, reach out to us at 02 98730080.
How does your business manage its technology solutions? If you’re like most small businesses, you likely have limited technology maintenance, and not necessarily due to any fault on your part. Small businesses have limited budgets and resources available to them, making technology maintenance less accessible. Thankfully, managed services are here to make sure that you never settle for less than what your organization needs.
In terms of managed services for technology maintenance and management, you might be surprised by how diverse and wide the breadth of services offered actually is. There are IT services for just about any resource that your business would want to take advantage of. We’ll walk you through some of the best and most valuable that any organization can leverage.
Server Management
Servers require intensive care, as does the rest of your business’ computing infrastructure. If you’re not a trained technology expert, you probably shouldn’t be handling servers, as the slightest issue could set off a chain reaction that leads to unprecedented downtime and data access issues. Unfortunately, hiring individual trained IT professionals can be expensive, and you could be limited by your geographical region as well. Managed server hosting can eliminate the need to host servers on your infrastructure. A managed service provider can host them off-site in a secure location where all of your data can be accessed remotely and maintained by on-site staff.
Security Management
Network security is one of those tricky parts of managing a business that requires a lot of industry-specific knowledge. Because of this, network security is something that a lot of businesses fall short on, as they either don’t have professional staff on-hand who know how to secure specific kinds of data, or they simply don’t perceive themselves as vulnerable. This is very far from the truth. If you don’t take steps toward keeping your business secure now, you could regret it in the future. This is why we urge you to consider implementing security best practices now, while you still can. Outsourcing this responsibility to a managed service provider is an excellent way to make sure that patches and other security augments are managed and maintained properly.
Help Desk Management
Even if you have an in-house team, they likely don’t have time to get to every little bit of technology maintenance and management, let alone help all of your organization’s employees work with their own devices. In cases like this, it’s helpful to have an outsourced organization that you can rely on to pick up the pieces that your in-house team can’t get to. This includes helping others within your business with any issues that they might be having with their devices. Think about how much time your employees could save if they had a single number to call for anything related to their technology troubles.
Overall, the biggest value point that you can get from managed services is the cost vs. value. You actually wind up saving money in the long run by working with a managed service provider, as the value received from working with an outsourced provider ultimately winds up paying for itself compared to investing in adding new salaries to your budget. PCSOFT can help your business with just about any managed services you’ll need. To learn more, reach out to us at 02 98730080.
IT support is one of the most important parts of any modern business simply because it’s just not feasible to run a business without any form of technology at its core. For example, most businesses rely on email and other forms of communication, whereas stores might require access to a point-of-sale software to sell their wares. Either way, it’s critical to the success of most businesses, and where there’s technology, there is bound to be someone who needs to manage and maintain it.
Every business will face a major technology problem at one time or another. Whether it is because your server just decided to quit on you, or you have received a not-so-friendly worded letter telling you to stop using a piece of software, managing technology for a whole organization is difficult. In cases like this, partnering with a managed service provider can be a real benefit. If you are going to choose to outsource some or all of your IT management to a provider, you will likely have to sign a service level agreement (SLA). Today, we look at the purpose of a SLA and how it works to benefit both parties of the agreement.
When it comes to maintaining and managing technology properly, larger businesses traditionally have the advantage over small-and-medium-sized ones, as they have greater financial resources. In fact, many small businesses will postpone these activities to help preserve the flexibility in their budget. What these businesses need is a way to leverage the benefits of proactive IT maintenance without breaking the bank.
Small businesses face considerable difficulties when trying to maintain their IT. First of all, since they generally have fewer employees, the workload is heavier for each resource. This leads to IT management being postponed in favor of other, seemingly more important concerns. However, this strategy accomplishes little more than putting the company in a more precarious position. Exacerbating the problem is the fact that hiring the personnel that could help you better manage your IT is often prohibitively expensive.
If neither option is practical, business in this position should turn to option three: managed IT services.
Managed services are a much different approach than what many would perceive as the typical IT service process, referred to as break/fix. Let’s say one of your pieces of hardware isn’t operating correctly. Once you report the issue to your IT provider, they dispatch someone to your location to resolve the problem, and you’re left on the hook paying a bill for that one specific call. You lose the capital, but also the potential revenue from the downtime you have experienced. This reactive approach therefore is quite a bit costlier than the increasingly more popular managed service model, which takes a proactive stance against technology issues.
At PCSOFT, we follow this proactive approach, monitoring your solutions remotely so that we can prevent issues from influencing your business, especially before they turn into bigger problems. For instance, under our managed service agreement, we will keep an eye on your infrastructure for any warning of hardware failure so you have an opportunity to replace that hardware before it can have a negative impact on your business.
If this option sounds more expensive than the break/fix approach, consider this: if you combine the loss in revenue that downtime from the broken equipment lead to and the cost of replacing or repairing the broken technology, you are out a significant amount of usable capital.
Compare that to managed services where there’s a chance that your problem could be resolved remotely--leading to a smaller service fee when compared to the cost of hardware replacement--it makes a lot of sense to see what kind of value PCSOFT’s certified technicians can bring you.
Depending on what is included in your service level agreement, the expenses associated with managed services will essentially always be less than the costs that of break/fix. PCSOFT can help you to make these changes in your own company, making operations both more reliable and less expensive in the process. To learn more about what managed IT services can do for you, give us a call at 02 98730080.
Consultation is available from every business that offers a service. For a small business owner who can’t afford to pay the high-end consultation rates that some organizations require, how do you go about getting the expert opinion to help push your business in the right direction? And what do service providers even mean when they throw around the word, “consultation?” We’ll explain this and more so that you can make the best decisions for your business.
It’s inevitable that your organization will face some hard decisions, but no choice is as painful as pulling the plug on the one thing that you’ve dumped your heart and soul into; your business. There is a plethora of problems that could cause a business to consider shutting its doors, but often there is a solution. If technology-related costs and downtime are your main problems, managed IT services can help.
Data loss: it’s not a fun term for any business to hear. However, when one considers all of the ramifications that data loss can have upon a business, it swiftly transitions from “not fun” to “alarming.” Have you taken the time to think about what losing your business’ data would really mean for your company?
It’s not unheard of for organizations to experience immense technological trouble that brings future potential problems into question. Surprises like these can spell trouble for businesses that are unprepared, especially considering the major damage it could cause to your budget. This forces you to ask yourself if you know what your current plan for IT covers, and what you want your provider to do to eliminate unexpected billing surprises.
Does your organization have trouble managing and maintaining its technology? Usually, this responsibility falls to an IT department, but this assumes that you actually have one. Furthermore, it’s easy for an IT department to be so busy with maintaining the state of things that they don’t have time to innovate and improve operations. What’s a business owner to do?
When You’re Stuck Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Technology isn’t something that lasts forever. It either has to be replaced periodically, or repaired and upgraded to ensure functionality in the long run. Of course, this becomes borderline impossible if the people in charge of IT maintenance must continuously accept phone calls and support requests and constantly put out fires. Eventually, you’ll start to suffer from systems that are inadequate, which creates even more problems.
In the end, you’ll just wind up working around issues until they become too severe to avoid. You’ll be forced into two possible situations: 1) Upgrade regardless of what situation your IT budget is in, or 2) Limit your organization’s potential by using inefficient equipment. At this point, you can’t ignore it any longer and you’ll be forced to either upgrade your equipment, or sacrifice functionality.
Managed IT to the Rescue!
Thankfully, you can keep your technology from even getting to this point by implementing managed IT services. With a managed service provider (MSP), you can make sure that your IT budget never gets busted again by premature hardware failure or unexpected maintenance. MSPs are capable of either supplementing or acting as a fully functional IT department for your organization.
If you need IT support, look no further. MSPs can act as a help desk solution. Do you need to implement new hardware? MSPs cover that, too. Whether you want to create a roadmap to implement new solutions, or you want to make incremental monthly investments for preventative maintenance, MSPs can help you improve the way your organization handles IT-related troubles.
Furthermore, if you have an IT department that’s overburdened, PCSOFT can assist them with the needful. If it’s handling support requests or implementing new and innovative solutions, we can help. All you have to do is give us a call. We can work out a service level agreement that details exactly what your business needs, and the rest will be history--just like your IT troubles!
To learn more about managed IT services, reach out to us at 02 98730080.
Does your business understand the importance of having a long-term IT budget? Your organization needs to be privy to the latest technology trends, which can change drastically depending on the year’s developments. Does your budget take into account the current value (or lack thereof) of your organization’s technology assets? Do you think about where you want to be in the future? If this sounds like too much to handle, the consulting service of an IT professional will provide you with an accurate plan.
Contrary to popular belief, small businesses are at just as much risk of experiencing technological problems as large enterprises. Naturally, the more technology that is implemented in an office, the more likely you are to experience hardware failure or compatibility issues. Data distribution can get more difficult, and accessibility can become a major pain point. How can you optimize the efficiency of your IT resources without exposing your business to risks?
One of the best ways you can manage your technology is through the use of outsourced IT services from PCSOFT. Our professional technicians are skilled in the management and maintenance of technology. Here are some of the major services that we offer, and what they can do for your organization.
Remote Monitoring and Maintenance
It’s a fact that most of the problems that happen with your technology can be resolved without waiting for a technician to arrive on-site. Managed IT allows your business to get the service that you need without going too out of your way for it. When you don’t have to worry about on-site visits, you’re more free to focus on other aspects of your business while IT is busy looking into the issue. We can apply patches and security updates remotely, and minimize downtime, so that you can focus on running your business.
Securing Your Network
One of the critical parts of managing sensitive and proprietary data is protecting it from data breaches and security threats. At this moment, there are countless threats on the Internet that can take advantage of the Internet of Things, along with ransomware, can put your business through the gauntlet. Thankfully, a comprehensive tool called a Unified Threat Management (UTM) solution can mitigate this threat by preventing infections in the first place.
Cloud Hosting
There’s no logical reason to host your data on-site when you can have us host it off-site. This is great for two reasons: 1) You won’t have to use precious time from your workday to maintain the hardware, and 2) You don’t have to add new salaries to your budget to get quality IT support. Chances are that you don’t have an in-house IT department, so knowing that your data is being managed by experienced technicians is more important than ever. PCSOFT can manage your organization’s data on our own servers so you don’t have to worry about it.
BDR (Backup and Disaster Recovery)
If you suddenly lost access to all of your data, or if it disappeared in an instant, what would you do? It could be next year, or next month, or even tomorrow. Whenever an untimely hardware failure or natural disaster strikes, you’ll want to be able to recover quickly. Downtime can drag your business down and have effects that persist for months, as you’ll need to replace hardware and recover critical data; a process that can take anywhere from a few hours to several days. With BDR, however, you can quickly and efficiently restore your data at a moment’s notice. Your business will be able to withstand data loss caused by natural disasters, user error, hacking attacks, and even hardware failure.
Is it time for a change in the way your business manages technology? If so, look no further than PCSOFT. To learn more, reach out to us at 02 98730080.
Many of those who are responsible for a business could tell you that managing it isn’t an easy task--and when IT is involved, it can very quickly get a lot more complicated. Of course, those that say that are more than likely using an antiquated, break-fix approach. Those who utilize managed IT services, however, will likely have a much different opinion.