IT support services for small companies are incredibly important for business growth. Digital transformation means that if you are not evaluating your businesses processes and software, you are likely to fall by the wayside. Given the current economy and business operations, now is as good a time as any to evaluate your IT systems and software for your business.
The only issue for small businesses is understanding the right level of IT service and support they require. The key to this is understanding your business goals and how different levels of IT infrastructure will support your business operations. You must also plan for the type of technology needed to achieve these goals.
For example, it might be to improve marketing and sales automation, in which a cloud-based sales automation tool would be applicable. It might be improving your telecommunication operations through the use of VOIP phone systems. Either way, as a business, mapping this out is imperative to improving your business generally.
In any instance, however, there are some key technology solutions that you can implement to improve your businesses security, communication and internal processes.
Improving Business Efficiency with Managed Hosting Services
Extremely important to any small business looking to improve their IT infrastructure and operations is a dedicated managed hosting service. This type of hosting is different to say website hosting, as it encapsulates all of your IT infrastructure in one network. IT managed hosting services essentially allows your business to rent secure and highly maintained servers and hosting.
Depending on the size of your business you may require a single server or complete network. This will be based on the size of your infrastructure and data processing during business hours. From a business perspective, you have the ability to own single space, or unit spaces and servers. Additionally, there is the opportunity to rent virtual servers which is essentially a machine rented offsite, which has multiple users who have control over it. This is a common practice for small businesses who do not require full hosting service, but require space to house their data.
For businesses, understanding your data size requirements will determine the specific hosting and additional IT support services you would require to operate productively.
Keeping Data Safe with Cyber Security Services
As you will already know, data security is extremely important in today’s digital world. With GDPR compliance an absolute necessity for any business, the need to ensure that any digital data you own or acquire is kept safe is imperative, legally.
Unfortunately, recent studies show that cyber attacks on SMEs continue to increase throughout 2022. Studies also show that over 40% of cyber attacks are on SMEs. This is due to hackers knowing that small businesses do not necessarily have the time or resources to invest in their cyber security. However, this can be combated and your businesses digital data can be kept secure through the use of cyber security services from an IT Support partner.
Additionally, there are frameworks for ensuring that your digital data is kept safe. These can be rolled out by internal IT teams with additional support from IT Support Companies.
Support Your Business with Disaster Planning and Recovery
In addition to cyber safety, business IT disaster planning and recovery is imperative to ensuring operational continuity, especially when disasters happen.
Disasters do happen, believe it or not. Often, a flood, fire electrical short-circuit might seem like a once in a blue moon situation, but many businesses have been caught out with this way of thinking. Therefore, having a business disaster IT continuity plan in place ensures that you don’t lose any important data or information within your network.
This is an essential part of IT disaster planning and planning as it enables you to safeguard both your hardware and software (think servers and apps) from an array of harmful scenarios to your business. These instances may range from cyber security attacks, or a flood that causes damage to your server, resulting in the loss of information.
By having a business continuity disaster recovery plan in place, you safeguard and back-up your data frequently, allowing you to access older versions of this data to ensure that not all is lost and a minimal recovery is made.
Keeping Business Operations Smooth with Your External IT Helpdesk
Technology solutions go beyond applications and hardware. They also cover troubleshooting and solution management. This is where having an efficient IT help desk plays an important role in the effective power of your business operations.
There is no average time to resolve any support ticket issues – this data will be based on the IT help desk provider you decide to engage within your business. However, it’s important to ensure that your IT helpdesk can solve at least 99% of your IT support tickets within a 24-hour period. This ensures that your business is able to operate efficiently on a day-to-day basis, thanks to IT technicians and engineers who are proficient in solving IT infrastructure problems.
Interestingly, the most common IT support tickets are often minor issues that can be solved almost instantly. These range from forgotten passwords to no hard-disk space or inefficient RAM performance. These issues can be solved swiftly, and if you have a BCDR plan in place, issues such as accidentally deleting files can be simply resolved by your IT help desk team.
Effective Customer Communications with VoIP Phone Systems
Business phone calls remain super important from customer service and sales perspective. Therefore, from a technology solution for your business, having VoIP phone systems in place are a key aspect to driving effective communications between your team and your customer.
VoIP essentially transfers call data from one network device to another. This uses a VoIP server which acts as the in-between for the two devices. The benefit of this type of telecommunication for your business is that VoIP systems account for a 99.9% uptime, while being backed up and fully secure.
The importance of using VoIP is due to BT rolling out the internet protocol by 2025. This has begun in 2020 and by 2025, all phone systems in place will have needed to make the switch to the internet protocol. Where this benefits a business is the opportunity for new features and access to better data packages, which will improve business productivity long-term.
Proofing Your Business with Technology Solutions
As we move into the IP era, businesses reliance on technology solutions will only continue to grow. In any instance, consider both building an internal IT team or outsourcing your IT support requirements to an external company. Either will benefit the growth of your business and be able to help guide your businesses It roadmap, detailing the required technology solutions to achieve the overarching business goals.
To find out more about our IT Support Services here at Equity, or to learn how we could support your business, we welcome you to contact us today.