Your business success begins with the right IT plan.
If you walked into your office tomorrow and all the computers were gone – would it impact your ability to conduct business? Most likely!
Now, imagine yourself going into your dentist’s office for an exam and the whole room is filthy. The floor is dirty, the counters look grimy, even the exam tools are disheveled! What would you think? You’d probably hightail it out of there!
Well, when your customers, or potential customers, interact with you their experience is very important to the success of your business. If your customers find your website to be super slow or “down” or, worse, “Not Secure”, then you are displaying a sloppy business. If their personal data is not safe with your company, or you lose their order information, you just tossed the proverbial bucket of dirty water over your business image. Luckily, the steps to clean it up are pretty straight forward!
How important is your computer system?
When it comes to your company’s IT needs, your focus should be on:
- Stability
- Security
- Protection
Stability
If you depend on computers to conduct your business, process customer information, or manage your finances, you must have a stable, dependable network to operate. This includes all the equipment in your network: computers (laptops and desktops), networked printers, and possibly your server and/or phones. Most employees spend their days either looking at a screen to retrieve data or input data, so if things go down, productivity goes down.
When you have a Capital Investment Plan and Budget, with computer equipment, hardware and software, being a dedicated line-item, you are making a smart move toward Stability. For less than the cost of a cell phone, you can be saving monthly, planning for the necessary capital investments to keep your computer systems running smoothly.
Equipment should always be checked regularly to ensure it is running properly. This includes keeping an eye on older hardware, maintaining software updates, and keeping all your files and records backed up regularly. Your business is as healthy as the system that runs it!
Security
There are many security protocols that go unattended in businesses. Your equipment is only as secure as it’s latest update and security patch. Once these important updates are ignored, your equipment, software and business records are at risk for security breaches and hackers. This type of exposure can cause system crashes that cripple your ability to do business, ransomware demands that take your equipment and files hostage, and exposure of customer data to dangerous hackers and spyware. Operating system updates, maintaining current antivirus protection, conducting disk defragmentation, and internal machine cleaning all help a computer operate optimally and safely. Vigilance about security is becoming increasingly more important as the digital world of business continues to expand.
Read our blog on Security Measures
Protection
Surprisingly, one of the most neglected IT steps is maintaining a consistent, regular backup process to protect all your data. Computer hardware can fail, data can become corrupted, computers can be damaged or lost. If your data has not been backed up recently you’re out of luck, and facing time-consuming and possibly impossible restoration. You want to make sure you can recover your files and data as quickly as possible.
Typically, backup systems combine an on-site physical backup such as an external hard-drive (disks and flash-drives are not stable enough to be considered backups), and an off-site backup. Nowadays, the easiest form of backup is a cloud-based system. There are options for file-only backup, as well as image-backup which allows you to restore your computer and files within minutes, exactly as it is setup.
We ask clients, “if you lost the last 60 days of your computer data would it make a difference?” If the answer to this is that you wouldn’t sleep for a week, then take the very manageable step of making sure you have a good backup system.
The most expensive IT is cheap IT.
Computer systems have become an essential equipment component of most businesses these days. We depend on them to get our daily work done – from keeping track of orders and accounting, to interacting with our customers, to getting paid for our services. Pretty critical stuff! When you neglect necessary upkeep of your systems, and bury your head in the sand that something bad could happen, you are exposing yourself and your staff, your business, and your customers to considerable risk.
Who is paying attention to your IT needs?
The best way to assure that your computer equipment has all these necessities – stability, security and protection – is to have planned, scheduled IT Maintenance. For many businesses, an in-house IT professional is not realistic, but these services are perfect for outsourcing.
With Managed IT Services, a fixed monthly cost assures that your computers and network are being monitored and maintained on a daily basis. Information Systems of Maine can design, build, and look after your systems to ensure optimal health and reliability, every day. Your customized Managed Services Plan allow us to keep a close eye on your equipment so you can avoid problems before they arise, and plan for necessary replacements and upgrades.
Technology cost are significant for businesses, and the cost of downtime if something goes wrong is even higher. Think how much more productive and cost efficient your business could be if you could avoid technology surprises! We customize our Managed IT Services to fit the specific needs of your business – so you pay only for what you need. Learn more about our Managed IT Services
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