The technology now exists to help all business types become more efficient in their day to day business, and it needn’t cost the earth.In today’s post, I’m going to explain why if your business is still relying on ad-hoc IT support it’s genuinely a broken model, and what the solution is.

Reactive IT support, “call us when you have a problem.” This is a big mistake that I see a lot of new businesses making. They’ll go to the local computer store and purchase the best deal on a desktop PC they can find.

Install the system themselves; then it’s just a matter of time before problems start to happen.Be it a virus, ransomware or problems moving their email to Office 365, the issues will compound and they’ll finally call for IT assistance.These compounding problems will slow down the day to day running of the business and when the IT company is finally called out to help it will usually be met with a large invoice.What makes this problem worse is that it could have been easily avoided and if they’d spoken to the right IT company in the first place.

Apart from firefighting IT problems by providing a reactive IT support service, there’s no clear IT strategy in place for the future of the business.

This means that when the business is ready to grow the IT problems are compounded. Factor in the broader IT issues and this will be reflected in the spend on IT support.Whilst a set agreed monthly amount for IT support might not seem attractive, the alternative is an endless stream of invoices from the IT company that you can’t control.It’s also not in the interest of an ad-hoc IT provider to fix the root cause of your problems and provide the correct solution. (because they bill you hourly, more problems for you equals more money for them)

A fully managed IT service. This, in essence, is a formal contract with an IT company who will act as the outsourced IT department for your business.

It’s a combination of proactive and reactive IT support for your business using the latest technology to monitor and maintain your systems.

This combination of proactive/reactive IT support and managed IT services allow you to achieve the IT & technology function of your business with minimal hassle.The proactive element of the service includes remote monitoring of all servers, workstations and laptops. We can spot when there are problems on the network or IT infrastructure before you even know about them. The quicker we can resolve the issue the less impact it has on your business.

This is where the managed IT services come into their own. We’ll look at your business come up with a formalised action plan for your technology.

This plan is aligned with your goals for the business. The whole purpose of this plan is to help you meet these goals more efficiently using technology

Well there are simple solutions you can put in place from day 1. Here are some examples:

Have a backup system that’s regularly checked (this will protect your business from security breaches)

Swap out the traditional hard disk drives in your workstation for a solid state device. (This will save you approximately 15 minutes/day/machine waiting for your computer to load applications and process items)

We can try to find out what technology they are using and what the market has to offer your business. Some amazing cloud technologies can transform specific manual tasks currently done in the business.

This can have a massive effect on what your employees are doing daily.

It’s a big transition for any business. We’ve helped not only the ad-hoc clients but also when there are internal IT teams that are transitioned into a managed service model.

The first thing to look at is your current spend on IT support and services.How much money has been paid out over the last 12 months of operation?These costs can be hidden in things like:

• New PC purchases
• Time involved to set up software
• Internet connection issues
• Server faults
• Software licensing
• IT support requests
• Server patches
• IT Staff costs

These are just some examples of where you are already being charged for time, and these items are usually included as part of a managed service agreement.Budget your IT spend – get an accurate picture of what’s going on.Once you’ve got an idea on what the 12-month cost to your business is for IT support you can then approach the prospect of a managed IT services contract with a much clearer view from a price perspective of what the difference is.

As we’ve discussed, a managed service contract is much more than just IT support. It adds real value to your business and is not just another commodity like the electricity or water bill that has to be paid.

Keep this in mind when you do go to tender on your IT contract

It’s easy to perceive IT support and services as an expense to your business. However, in this day and age, the technology in your business is an investment.

If you are not invested in the right technologies, your competitors will out perform your efforts due to their efficiency gains which can be achieved by choosing the technology partner.If you’d like to find the right technology partner for your business, we’d love to speak to you. 

We offer a 3 month money back guarantee on our managed IT services contracts, so we literally put our money where our mouth is!We also regularly have a client satisfaction rate of over 98% on our helpdesk, so give us a call on 0118 9260084 or e-mail us to set-up an initial fact-finding call now.