There are few joys in life that are as pure as the feeling of being your own boss. Running your own business is an amazing way to make a living – you get to set the rules, and your own hours, and reap all the benefits of your success.
There’s a reason, after all, that business owners are some of the most satisfied workers anywhere in the country.
Of course, that doesn’t mean running your own business is a breeze. There’s a lot of hard work that goes into the process. You need to stay on top of all sorts of things. For example, learning the signs you need IT support.
How can you tell when the moment has arrived when you need to bring in this kind of extra tech help? What do you need to know about deciding to hire an IT support company? Read on and we’ll walk you through the basics.
You Keep Facing Security Breaches
The most obvious reason why you might need to bring in some external IT support? Because you keep facing security breaches that are putting the safety and stability of your business at risk.
There’s a good chance that in the early days of your company, you or the most tech-savvy individual of your small team decided to handle the IT needs of your company themselves. The budget just wasn’t there to bring someone else on full-time to handle these needs.
Fast forward sometime later, as your business has expanded, you find that you are facing more tech and data issues than you know how to handle. The more your business grows, the more valuable your data will become, and the more viruses, security breaches, and other such issues will arise.
The root problem here is that cybersecurity in the modern era is simply not a basic thing to take care of. It’s nuanced, challenging, and most importantly, ever-changing. It’s not as simple as setting up some cybersecurity protocols early on and letting it all sink into the background.
Ensuring your company stays safe requires someone updating, monitoring, and taking care of your tech concerns at all times. It doesn’t matter how small your business is – you are still at risk for a cyberattack.
In fact, according to some recent studies, you may be seen as more vulnerable and more likely to be attacked than some bigger companies.
If you’ve found yourself infected with malware or facing a breach even once, it should push you to take steps to ensure it never happens again. That likely will involve figuring out a way to expand your IT department and legitimatize it.
You Have No Safety Plan for Data
When it comes to modern business, your company is really only as valuable as the data that you own and manage. Your data – whether it be your customer and client Rolodex, essential production information, or something else – is the backbone of your company.
What happens if you lose it all?
The fact of the matter is that hard drive crashes and server breakdowns are more common than you’d like to think. If your data is being stored solely in one location (or even just two) you’re putting the entire value of your company at risk.
Any well-equipped modern company will have plans and backup plans in place when it comes to these technological risks. They will know what to do to access data in the event of a crash, breach, or another issue.
There should be no situation possible in which your valuable company data is lost forever. There should be foolproof plans in place that were created ahead of time and are ready to be executed at the drop of a hat.
Not sure if you can pull this off on your own? That’s where this local IT support company comes in. Working with experienced IT workers to reach goals like these is the smart move for any business owner working today.
Losing data could mean losing direct revenue, but it could also mean losing customer trust. Can your client base continue to work with you once their data has been mismanaged in this way? It’s not a risk you should be willing to take.
If you don’t have a clear risk mitigation plan when it comes to data management, it is a surefire sign you need to think about reaching out for some additional IT assistance.
Your Losing Time and Competitive Edge
The modern business marketplace is flooded with companies just like yours. It’s harder than ever to stand out from the pack and make an impact, but you have no other choice if you want to be a success.
In this kind of competitive world, you have to keep your edge over the other businesses in your field. You simply can’t do that if your business is being hampered by tech issues, or even if you’re just simply running a slower and less agile digital system than your competitors.
The digital structure of your business plays a huge role in how efficient and productive your staff is. Do they have a hard or easy time pulling down files they need for tasks, transferring information and data, and communicating?
If these tasks take a long time, either because of issues or poor design, you are watching your competitive edge in the marketplace slip away.
Even the difference of a few minutes here or there can make a big difference when it comes to the quality and speed of your work.
If you find yourself slipping behind the competition due to poor tech support, you have a duty to yourself and to your team to bring in the help needed to resolve this issue.
The best IT support company in your area will be able to help you resolve this issue in no time.
Your Tech ROI Is Low
We rely a lot on modern technology to help run our businesses – and we invest a lot into this technology as well. Even a small business likely spends a huge amount of money on getting all the relevant tech into their workplace and operating.
When you make this investment, you intended to see money back. This tech is supposed to make your business run faster and more efficiently and should help to put more money in your pocket at the end of the work day.
Another sign that you might need to look into outside IT support is that you’re not getting as much from your investments as you thought you would.
If you spent a lot of money on a piece of equipment, you need that equipment to live up to its fullest potential in order to enjoy the proper ROI on this purchase. If the equipment in question is often suffering from bugs or poor performance, you’re never going to hit the ROI that you desire.
Bringing in an external IT support team can help to ensure that each piece of equipment you’ve purchased for your business is running its best.
That helps to ensure that your investments are taken care of – and can be given the opportunity to prove themselves as lucrative as you thought they might be.
Your Team is Wasting Time
When you don’t have IT support on hand at a company, the burden of managing tech issues is passed onto your existing staff. That often either means one of two scenarios.
You either have one tech-talented individual who is constantly helping all other employees during the day, meaning they never get their individual work done.
Alternatively, your entire staff spends time trying to tech troubleshoot problems that arise (without much knowledge or experience) taking your entire staff away from work.
Either way, you’re taking your team away from the work that they need to be focused on and forcing them to focus on a whole world of other issues that have nothing to do with their job descriptions.
This is likely going to alienate your staff. You may experience higher turnover rates, with employees leaving to find better-equipped workplaces. Their excitement about their work might diminish, and you might see their performance slip.
None of this, it goes without saying, would be ideal. If you see your team’s time slipping through their fingers, it’s time to step in and get IT support.
The Major Signs You Need IT Support
How do you know when you need ‘an IT support company near me?’ It can be hard for any business owner to know when it’s time to pull the trigger on bringing in outside help.
However, the above signs you need IT support are all worth taking seriously when they arise. Waiting too long to provide this extra help can sink the competitive edge of your business.
Need more info and advice on running a business? Keep scrolling our blog for more.
