Tag Archives: #ITHelpDesk

How to Run Your Business Without Hiring an IT Employee

Small business owner, woman in blazer, smiling, working in the IT industy with IT employees

Outsource your IT and get a staff of qualified techs for a fraction of hiring one internal employee

Today, IT professionals are in high demand, and the labor shortage makes it more than a little challenging to find one who can join the staff at small-business prices. Not when corporations are already hotly competing for every technician, admin, and developer on the market to fill their own in-house staff.

But that’s no need to worry. Fortunately for small business, the IT industry has you covered. There a wide variety of IT teams who work hard to provide outsourcing options in every manner of IT service you might need. This arrangement works for everyone, as the IT teams get to keep busy even when your entire network is running smoothly. Small businesses also get the IT support they need, when they need it, at small-business prices.

Today, we’re here to share a few trade secrets on how to get the IT support your small business needs without competing to employ your own on-staff IT employee. With a combination of the following services, you should have all or most of your IT bases covered.

Managed IT and Cybersecurity Subscriptions

Managed IT is the primary resource that every small business need to know about. Often abbreviated to MSP (managed service provider), what this means is an IT team that will curate your network, your software, and your cybersecurity for as long as your small business is subscribed to their service. Managed IT teams are there to be your outsourced IT department in many ways, but they also only deal with computers, software, and networks.

Rent Printers and Copiers with Tech Support Included

To cover that special equipment need, you can rent your printers and copiers along with other office equipment from a service that also provides complete tech support for their devices. Large-scale office printers and copiers often need a significant amount of IT support and maintenance, making supported rental far more practical for a small business team if you don’t have an IT printer expert on staff.  Just be sure that your rentals are with a company that offers full support of both the hardware and software required to keep your printers and copiers humming.

Full-Service Website Hosting

For your website IT, many small businesses benefit from working with a high-quality hosting provider. The company that provides your online server can also help you maintain and secure your website. The key is to look for a full-service package from a reputable hosting provider. Don’t be taken in by cut-rate hosting, as the services are often well below standard and the perks are non-existent. Realize that when you invest in a mainstream host like Azure, AWS or Digital Ocean that part of what you are paying for is the support of their on-staff IT to keep your website safe, secure, and even properly updated with the right supported hosting package.

Local Computer Repair and Refurbishing Services

Finally, for all your additional on-site needs, you can partner with a local computer repair service. These teams and workshops often specialize in riding to the rescue when you need them most. When a computer is physically malfunctioning rather than simply experiencing a software problem, local computer repair teams can make it right. Not only that but when your devices get old and it’s time to get new ones, these teams are often eager to buy the gently used computers and mobile devices from you and help you find a good price on new or like-new refurbished models.

Small businesses have a surprising amount of options outside of hiring on-staff IT to cover every one of your universal or unique IT needs. If you need managed IT services, security, or cloud communication solutions, then contact us today! We look forward to supporting your company with our shared technical expertise.

Stress Management

Business owner managing his own IT infrastructures while running a business

We are not exactly doctors, but we can relieve a lot of stress and worry when it comes to your network infrastructure

Those who own or manage businesses will have a stark advantage in using managed service providers over those who don’t. Generally, those who attempt to manage their own IT infrastructures while running businesses will have a much higher level of stress in their lives. The purpose of owning a business is generally for occupational freedom — that is, the freedom from depending on an employer to earn a living. Attempting to manage an IT infrastructure without the help of qualified and experienced professionals can and usually does usurp the joy and satisfaction that comes from owning a business.

Maintenance

Certain facets of computers and network technology can be maintained relatively easy by laymen, but this doesn’t come without risks implying that more problems can be introduced into the system than solved. Computer operating systems such as Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh are frequently updated which introduces complexity — the layman will have to spend time understanding the changes in order to ensure continuity within the computer network. Not only are operating systems updated, but software such as Microsoft Office, Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, and Apple Safari are updated frequently. As said, attempting to make changes or do maintenance without understanding the technicalities of the updated software can cause problems. One might think that by attempting maintenance without the aid of experienced professionals can save money, but when computer calamities come as a result, the stress can be overwhelming and even cost more to repair than if a managed service provider had consistent control over it.

Data Preservation

For the most part, it’s common knowledge that computer data related to businesses and their customers is an asset and must be protected. Data preservation is not an exact science, but again, there are dangers in inherent in attempting to restore computer data after a catastrophic event — breakdowns, theft, fire, earthquakes, vandalism, and even damage inflicted by disgruntled employees are all examples. Data storage devices can break down — under ideal conditions, one would not expect something like this to happen, but imagine going to restore data and files after a catastrophic event only to find out the device storing backed up data is non-operational with data therein unrecoverable — a stress factor easily mitigated with the help of professionals.

Security

Most people who install software security suites onto their computers don’t give it much thought afterword. For some types of users that works fine, but for the business owner that’s not a recommended approach. While this type of software has advantages, attempting to understand and manage it can be daunting. Furthermore, there tend to be unrealistic expectations with security software — it’s not a magic bullet that will prevent hackers and viruses from infiltrating and compromising computer systems. Obtaining the counsel and support of professionals will mitigate the stress associated with managing and understanding security software. For example, depending on what circumstances the software is configured to push alerts, the alerts need to be properly interpreted and without procrastination — frankly, security software alerts can be cryptic and therefore time-consuming to understand without help.

Help Desk

Sometimes, even if one is capable of resolving a problem without professional consulting, spending time to find the solution can be counterproductive. Ask yourself whether taking hours or days away from business and personal life is worth a solution to the intermittent freeze or speed problems exhibiting themselves on a computer or smartphone. Let’s not forget about that good old express service where expert help is a click of a mouse or short phone call away.

SystemsNet specializes in a broad array of services and with years of experience. Please contact us for information on highly competitive service plans.

It’s Better to Use Managed Service Providers

Woman with beautiful smile holding a tablet and managed service providers concept

Are you ready to outsource your IT needs?

It’s natural to want to save money wherever possible — and what smart businesses don’t do this? Relatively small businesses whose owners happen to be tech-savvy can get away with managing their own computers and equipment. However, for larger types of businesses with several computers, it’s not practical to manage their own IT even if the owners are tech-savvy. This is due to the fact that large businesses consume too much time via administration or other ways to be able to effectively manage their own IT infrastructure — and this isn’t even factoring in stress. To run a large business and attempt to manage the computer infrastructure on top of that would make life pretty dull — and exhausting. What satisfaction comes from a large business when it’s owner attempts to run the whole show themselves? There really isn’t any.

This is why using managed service providers is a novel idea. Instead of the owner, manager, or employees attempting to manage the computer infrastructure, they can focus on business productivity and leave the tech stuff to professionals. Outsourcing routine management of computer systems to service providers not only helps save time, but it saves potential disaster. Many successful businesses have suffered great losses due to their computer systems not being properly managed — when devices stop working, repairs are often attempted by those who are not familiar enough with the systems being repaired, and in some cases cause more damage than the original problem being fixed. For small computer systems or networks where productivity disruption is not a big issue, self attempts at repair are generally more acceptable — but not with relatively large businesses. Data preservation and restoration in the event of disasters or breakdowns in and of themselves can be sophisticated without even getting into device repair or maintenance. Let’s expand a little bit on some points above.

Stress

So your business just received its first major payoff. All the planning, hard work, sweat, and tears are paying off and the prospect is looking bright. The bucks keep rolling in but there never seems to be time to enjoy the fruits of the labor due to the desire to save as much money as possible — by attempting to self-manage the computer infrastructure. It’s great that the talent to achieve such a task can be retained, but let’s not forget why we start businesses in the first place — it’s aspiration toward freedom from the general boundaries of an average employment. By attempting to manage every aspect of the business, the joy of starting the business in the first place can be easily negated.

Time

This point sort of goes back to what was discussed about stress. However, although more time spent toward managing a business can increase stress, managing computers steals time away from the productivity side of the business. Take the following as an example: An important business associate is on phone and content of certain E-mails are being discussed — then, suddenly, access to E-mail goes down postponing the productivity of the phone call. Whether the E-mail connectivity went down due to postponed maintenance or something breaking down, the business is on the hook to take care of the broken E-mail in addition to — hopefully — resuming the productivity of the lost phone conversation.

Risk

Self-management of computer infrastructures carries risk through various means. Some of those are loss of productivity, lost time, and lost money — all due to inefficient attempts at repair, maintenance, backup and restore, and perhaps physical illness due to being overstressed. Imagine performing a routine backup of customer data and when the time of year comes around to reach out to customers via E-mail marketing, it’s discovered that the entire customer-information database has been wiped out and unrecoverable due to an overlooked detail in the backup system.

Examples of risks are numerous and can generally be avoided by outsourcing to managed service providers. SystemsNet has sufficient experience and manpower to deal with the needs of large businesses. Please contact us to discuss how we can help your business.

How to Encourage Your Staff to Call their IT Help Desk

Male receptionist calling an IT help desk in a hotel

Having a fully staffed help desk allows for faster resolution of issues compared to a single employee help desk.

IT help desks can be incredibly useful inside your business infrastructure. They help employees solve problems, make better use of their technology, and face down cybersecurity threats with confidence. However, many IT help desks are sorely underutilized as employees are hesitant to make the call when they experience trouble.

Most modern professionals are independent-minded. They enjoy solving their own problems and, if the IT desk is new, they are used to handling technical hiccups on their own. Even if your IT team could streamline and improve their own troubleshooting, staff may not realize just how much they’re missing out by not calling the help desk at the right times. They wind up losing hours each year to attempting to fix or –worse– attempting to work on half-broken workstations.

So today, we’re here to highlight a few useful ways to encourage your staff to call the help desk when they need it.

Add IT to Your VoIP Quick Contacts

The first and easiest way to encourage your staff to call IT is to make it easy to call IT. Your VoIP phone system can feature a list of quick contacts that every staff member has access to. This may include the front desk, mail room, HR, and of course their own supervisor and team members. Make sure that this quick-contacts list also includes a prominent link to the IT help desk phone number.

If your team uses handsets, ensure that one programmable speed-dial button is set to take them straight to IT. This way, talking to IT is a single click or button press away. No need to look up the number which acts as a procrastination barrier to calling for IT when it is needed.

Provide Live Chat Connection to the IT Help Desk

For many modern professionals in their 20s and 30s, live chat is a far more comfortable form of communication than talking on the phone. Chatting doesn’t require ‘small talk’ or laughing at each other’s jokes. There’s also no worry about sounding awkward or stilted when talking about tech stuff that employees may not understand.

By providing an easily found live-chat link to the IT help desk, you may find that many more staff members are comfortable reaching out and asking for help when they need it.

Offer Rewards for Reported Phishing and Malware Attacks

Employees often don’t know what to do when they receive a phishing email or think they have just witnessed signs of a malware attack. What you want them to do is report it to IT so that the problem can be hunted down, defended against, and stopped in the future. The best way to do this is to offer some kind of reward or bounty for every phishing email or malware attack spotted by an employee.

They are sure to call IT with each false or suspicious email with a reward on the line, something that is great for morale and great for your business cybersecurity.

Encourage Staff Directly in Meetings and Memos

Always combine the direct method with opportunities. IT may be on live chat and speed dial, but your team needs to know that you really want them to call the IT help desk when something comes up. So encourage them. Encourage them in group meetings, and offer reminders through emails and mentions at company parties.

The more often you mention that calling IT is a desired company policy, the more staff members will pick it up to be good employees.

Audit Currently Half-Broken Workstations

For stodgy old professionals who just don’t call IT no matter what, one of the best solutions is simply to audit workstations. Have IT come through and assess whether each personal workstation is in ship-shape or has been limping along with unsolved software errors, up-updated programs, or undetected malware.

Anyone with a half-broken workspace should then receive a pointed speech about how not calling IT puts the company at risk while their workstation is either replaced or repaired before they can return to work. This will drive the point home for heel-draggers.

Praise Employees for Taking Care of IT-Assisted Repairs

Finally, remember to offer praise as well. It is an employee’s duty to keep their workstation in good working order and to call IT if anything problematic or suspicious arises. Each time someone takes care of their own IT scutwork without having to be told, offer a small word of praise or reward. The simple reinforcement will build morale and show that IT responsibility is worth respect in your company.

Those who are IT-vigilant will feel that respect and others who want praise will follow their example.

Making use of your IT help desk is about more than just technology. You need your entire team onboard to the idea of calling IT when something goes wrong and following their directions to fix the problem efficiently. These methods can healthily promote the use of your IT help desk by offering opportunity, encouragement, and minor consequences for neglect. For more IT help desk tips or services, contact us today!