5 ways your current IT is holding you back

1. Downtime disaster

On average, businesses suffer 14 hours of IT downtime each year. Experts believe such downtime costs more than 127m man hours a year in Europe and North America alone.

While large corporations generally have access to a full-fledged IT division, many SMEs are finding themselves:

• ‘Putting out fires’, reacting to each issue as it arises and dealing with ‘symptoms’ instead of what might be the root cause of their IT failures;
• Relying on an inevitably expensive contractor to come in and sort out an issue as and when they arise; and
• Even hoping employees themselves can sort out IT problems…

Instead, consider outsourcing your IT strategy to business IT services who are on call 24 hours a day if needed so your problems are dealt with immediately in a cost-effective way. Also they are able to improve and enhance your IT infrastructure, drilling down to its core issues ? so the chances of downtime are greatly reduced in the medium- to long term.

2. Hassle factor

Backups, security, data management, general support ? the list of a company?s IT responsibilities are far-reaching and potentially expensive.

Business IT services can drive down costs by:

• Ensuring all your data is backed-up on their servers;
• Keeping your data safe and secure with top tier security systems;
• Offering experts team to contact in the event of an IT problem arising; and
• Maintaining robust systems at all times.

3. Remote access revolution

Business is moving into the Cloud, whether you’re ready for it or not.

According to the Federation of Small Businesses, cloud services are one of the key technology investments that are having a positive impact on business innovation. However, studies show that only 26 per cent of small firms are investing in new technologies such as the Cloud.

While making the move to hosted technology might sound intimidating, its benefits are substantial:

Hosted technology allows employees to remote access their work from anywhere, maximising their efficiency.

If a hard drive goes down in your office, your workflow won’t be interrupted; all your data and software is stored in the Cloud and can be accessed from another computer in a matter of seconds.

4. On site insight

Business IT services can step in and help across the entire process, reducing the cost of your asset ownership from major elements such as setting up and configuring your entire IT system, working hand in hand with you and your needs to smaller elements such as fixing faulty printers or optimising your broadband.

5. Moving goal posts banned

You might be considering a complete overhaul of your IT infrastructure in-house. But as the Harvard Business Review revealed in a survey of IT projects, nothing is ever quite that simple…

IT project costs typically overrun by 27 per cent and one in six IT project costs run over by 200 per cent.

Business IT services are experts in managing IT projects, all at a fixed price, so you know your bottom line from the outset, and are guaranteed a new IT infrastructure that will work ? plus one that is upgradable.

Danny Walker  is Managing Director at IT Farm.

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