No matter what type of industry your business belongs to, or how big it is, hiring business IT support people for your company will become a must at a certain point.
Sometimes small business owners think they can handle IT support on their own and save some precious dollars.
But here’s the thing…
If some of your employees tell you they know “technology” you should run away from them. Technology is very vast. If you’re not a specialist in that field, then you can never handle it properly. They may be able to handle their computer problems at home but it is much more complex in a business environment.
Below you can find the signs that your company needs business IT support services:
7 SIGNS YOU NEED A BUSINESS IT SUPPORT SPECIALIST
1) Meetings take longer than expected
You’ve planned to have a 15-minute meeting with your team but it takes more than an hour. That’s mostly because you’re having some “technical difficulties”. At first, you try to fix the Wi-Fi connection in your conference room, then you try to invite the employees who work remotely to Zoom or Google Meet.
When all of them finally connect, your screen doesn’t show up on Apple TV all of a sudden. That needs to be fixed, too! Just a few minutes and the problem is fixed. Oh, but wait.. now the calls are choppy! No wonder your meetings last an hour instead of 15 minutes!
Video conferences and virtual meetings are supposed to be effective activities for your companies and not headaches! You shouldn’t make your people wait for such a long time before you go live. It’s dull and demotivating.
2) There’s been an IT security breach in your company
Most companies believe that cybersecurity is a one-time process. You set up the security policies, start using some security tools, and – voila – your company and the data are secured forever. This is actually one of the biggest mistakes companies make.
Small businesses don’t care about their cybersecurity as they think they are too small to be a target for attacks. However, recent surveys show 43% of cyber-attacks performed on small businesses. What’s even more interesting is that only 14% of small businesses consider the cybersecurity of their company highly effective.
Don’t these numbers make you want to include an IT support position in your technical hiring strategy? The business IT support specialist will always be there to secure the company’s information. He/she will carry out the following tasks for your cybersecurity:
- Eliminate cybersecurity bad habits
- Implement the best tools and practices of cybersecurity
- Constantly monitor the IT security policies
- Update security based on the latest security tools
- Find out the vulnerabilities with the help of penetration tests
- Teach employees how to avoid cybersecurity threats
3) You don’t have a recovery plan
According to the latest surveys, more than 60% of small companies that lose their data shut down permanently.
Recently, many businesses store more and more data in a single device. Because of this, companies encounter higher risks of losing the data due to ransomware, hard disk crash, or theft.
Isn’t this the worst thing that could happen to any company? If you lose the data it will be a big challenge for you to recover it. Even if your business is able to deal with data loss, your customers may not trust you again with their personal information.
If you have a business IT support specialist at your company, they will help you:
- Discover what should be backed up
- Find out where to back up the data
- Set up a proficient recovery system
4) Your team isn’t productive anymore
If your project manager is summing up the monthly results of your employees regarding your active projects, you might notice some decrease in productivity even among the high-performing employees.
Such a significant decrease might indicate that your IT infrastructure is not set up efficiently and you need IT support around. Your employees are fixing and struggling with computers, routers, and printer problems and are constantly using their work time on troubleshooting the tech problems.
Even 15 minutes a day spent on technical troubleshooting is tiresome and exhausting and might also cost money if you are billing your clients on an hourly basis.
In addition to some extra costs, you risk the motivation of your high-performing and motivated employees. They may leave the company.
So, reconsidering your business strategy and doing some basic calculations may uncover that hiring IT support turns out to be less costly.
5) Your company is scaling
When the time comes to scale up your company and grow, you are sure to come across some technological problems. You will need to focus on a million things at a time: hiring new employees, planning financially, finding a new office space. This is tiresome and by allocating some of the activities to professionals you can work more productively and avoid burnout.
When scaling up, you will start lacking IT infrastructure. Everything should be set up professionally in the new office space so that you can avoid any possible problems.
Getting an IT support specialist can be beneficial at this point because you can delegate all the technology-related stuff and focus on growing the client base.
Hiring IT people for the newly growing company will help you prevent any kind of “technical debt”. IT support will help you plan out the purchases and not lose money on unnecessary items.
6) You are always busy with tech problems
Even if you are familiar with network setups and are okay with commonly occurring computer problems, it is not very pleasant to spend all your day at work fixing computer issues.
You might have started as a one-person business or had a friend around as a co-founder. It is advised to hire an IT service desk specialist in-house so that you can allocate the tasks to them and focus specifically on the growth of the company.
If you find yourself or moreover the other employees distracted by technology issues, it is a clear indicator to hire IT support.
7) Your investments in technology are not profitable
One of the most common business challenges is managing your company’s IT operations. It is harsher when you don’t have the required experience. Yes, you might have set up your home network and fixed a small issue on your computer but this is not the same game as managing IT at your office.
You might risk your huge investments in a new computer and it turns out not to work. Say you have set up a piece of wireless network equipment. It was high quality but as you are not an IT support specialist you have not calculated your internet needs correctly, and haven’t taken into consideration where to place it for the best range.
Boom, your router is lagging and your office has no internet connection in the prime time of work. This frustrates you and your team. Clients complain because you cannot meet deadlines.
An experienced specialist in IT services would ensure you always have the best connection and hardware for your needs.
If you have found even one of these signs relevant to your business, it’s the right time to think of hiring a business IT support specialist.
