Are these four IT issues costing your business?
Issued by JEC Technologies, Senior Digital copywriter - Candice Lee Reeves
Originally Published by ITWeb: Johannesburg, 11 Mar 2022 Read time 4min 50sec
Your business niche is where the money is, but the day-to-day costs of managing the IT that enables you to do that work means you’re often just keeping up. This gets even more complex and costly as remote workers become the norm, new devices saturate the market and the number of business applications continue to rise.
As a small and medium-sized business, you often grow faster than larger companies; this requires greater room for flexibility. Without the funds or need for a dedicated IT department, it becomes a question of: Whose job is this really? Is managing IT the best use of our resources? Often, the answer is no. Here are four ways your IT may be costing you and what you can do about it.
1. Managing IT equipment
IT resources are a necessary expense, but they’re expensive – especially considering their relatively short lifespan. Repairs, upgrades and managing replacements and warranties for outdated machines – it all adds up. Managing connectivity can get costly and complicated too, especially now that so many employees work remotely. Between the data costs and the unpredictability of equipment and software compatibilities, it’s enough to consume more of your time and money than you’d like.
Setting aside a monthly budget for these costs often falls short. Specialised software and training for technical teams, custom development, changes to applications and solutions need to be more aligned with a hybrid workforce. These undulating expenses need a more strategic approach.
What can you do about it?
If you’re feeling the burn of constantly putting out IT-related fires, we get it. Here are the first steps to creating a sustainable IT infrastructure:
Back up your data to the cloud;
Mitigate the impact of disasters; and
Secure your data in the cloud.
Cloud-based systems like Microsoft 365 (and all its collaboration tools) are an excellent way to reduce both capital costs and ongoing expenses related to IT services. It also enables teams to get up and running quickly, and improves productivity, with scalable support for end-users regardless of their location.
2. Juggling complex IT systems
Growing businesses usually add new IT elements to their systems as they need them – creating a kind of patchwork of different technologies. This can get clunky and time-consuming to navigate, and it lacks insight and reporting on what’s happening across the board. An integrated, cloud-based service is critical here.
With remote working part of the ‘new norm’, it’s added extra urgency for businesses to migrate to the cloud quickly and effectively. Even if they do, it can still be a risk to security and data privacy when the correct foundations aren’t in place to support a smooth execution.
What can you do about it?
There are a variety of solutions you can start with, including a security awareness campaign and software like Office 365, Security Analyzer and O365 Secure Score (free). To mitigate risks further, we recommend using a professional service like JEC Technologies to help you identify the gaps and get insights that show you what’s happening in your environment.
3. Riding the rate of change
The demand is higher than ever to implement resources, equipment, software and skills to support your IT needs. The technology space is continuously reinventing itself, which makes it difficult for businesses to stay up to date. This can be a risk for any business to stay competitive.
What can you do about it?
A managed service enables you to outsource specific tasks. In IT, this can include many services, including a scalable remote help desk, managed connectivity solutions and hardware management. Using a service like this can offer you the flexibility and peace of mind to grow at your own pace, knowing that your IT systems are keeping up.
4. Managing security poorly
Cyber security is critical. However, there’s a serious lack of understanding around cyber-attacks and how to control them. For instance, many businesses end up implementing solutions for the wrong problem, leaving them with insufficient cover for when they do get targeted. This leaves your business open to a loss of revenue, reputation damage and loss of productivity.
What can you do about it?
To get started, we recommend multi-factor authentication on all systems, and policies on password use and protection. Here’s a great security checklist you can refer to. There are also many things a professional service provider like JEC Technologies can implement to protect your reputation, users and data from threats – especially since we have the right skillsets and can enable these protocols quickly and correctly.
Implement managed IT services
Outsourcing our IT management to dedicated specialists will help you get your time and resources back so you can do what you do best – improving efficiencies, resource allocation and potentially increasing turnover. How much you outsource is up to you – it can conveniently scale and adapt with your needs.
JEC Technologies can help you manage all aspects of your IT system. Services include:
Managed IT support services;
Microsoft 365 adoption and change management;
Managed connectivity solutions;
Hardware as a service;
Industry leading 24/7 help desk solution;
Experienced technicians; and
Centralised service desk.
Want to discover how JEC Technology’s qualified IT specialists can help you manage and amplify your company's IT systems?