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IT vs Productivity

January 22, 2018 by Paul Schwegler

How much time and productivity did you lose on computer problems over the last year? It’s a safe bet that even routine maintenance had a bigger impact than you planned. Given it was one heck of a year for cyber-attacks, the emergency costs may have skyrocketed too. Without getting an analyst in to crunch every action and every number, you’ll never know how much money you could have earned in those lost hours. Right now, what you know for sure is that you didn’t go into business to be an IT expert, but suddenly there you are. Battling servers, workstations, software, protections and permissions, all on a daily basis…managing all those things you don’t particularly care about, or understand more than you need to. Somehow, you ended up running an IT company plus your regular business.

It didn’t start that way. You got into your business because you’re great at what you do. We can help you get back to doing what you’re really passionate about, and free up your time for revenue growth activities. All those nagging tasks sucking away your day can be offloaded to our Managed Service Provider (MSP) team.

Here are a few examples of what we can take care of for you:

Software and security updates: If it seems like an update for something is always popping up, sending your employees away for yet another coffee break while it runs, you’re not far off. While it’s great that software providers are continually improving their product, patching holes and reinforcing against threats, keeping up with them all can be incredibly time-consuming. Our MSP can handle all updates and patches out of business hours, keeping your employees focused on business tasks.

Help desk: While we can’t remotely unjam the copier (yet), we can take care of all those “I don’t know how to”, “I think it’s broken” or “I need another” tech problems that incrementally drive you crazy. You can simply circulate the new protocol – ask the MSP – and watch how fast these small problems are solved, and your employees are back to work, more productive than ever.

Network management and security: The last thing you want is extended downtime thanks to crashed servers or a cyber-attack. Our MSP works with you to balance security with your business’ necessary tasks and access, leaving you protected and operational. You’ll have staff set-up with the exact permissions they need, robust backup systems in place, and early warning when hardware/software is aging out.

Strategic IT planning: Why blow your IT budget putting out fires, buying incompatible systems or tech you simply don’t need? Our MSPs can conduct strategic planning in line with your goals so you’re able to scale what you already have and schedule new expenses in time to meet projections.

The time you spend battling IT problems could be time you spend earning money, growing your business and moving strategically forward. Moving to a Managed Service Provider is easier than you might think too. Simply let us know you’re ready to get back to the parts of your business you love, and we’ll take it from there.

Filed Under: Maintenance, Networking, Security, Tips Tagged With: business IT support, helpdesk, MSP, preventative maintenance

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Keep Up to Date by Outsourcing

November 27, 2017 by Paul Schwegler

Updating your business software is one of your best protections against cyber-attack, but actually going through and running the updates is a task that often gets overlooked. I would go as far as saying that keeping your equipment and software up-to-date is as important as having an antivirus program on all of your machines.

Emergency updates are a killer

Just between us, most businesses update their software only when the repair techs come to fix a major breakage. The techs run the updates before they leave, then the systems sit there with ever-widening security gaps… until another breach happens and the techs are called back for another band-aid solution. Emergency only updates in a break/fix model are a great little earner for those techs, not so good for your uptime or budget.

Finding time for maintenance

To keep your business up and running securely, you need someone who lives and breathes updates. They’ll need to have top tech skills so they know when and how to apply all the patches, and how to make sure all your other tech is playing nice (and do it all after-hours). If you have an in-house IT specialist, you’re set – and they should already have an update plan. But if you don’t have a qualified IT team member, outsourcing to managed services is the perfect solution. You get highly skilled technicians remotely applying your network updates after hours.

For the DIY’er

Many businesses may not think they have the budget for outsourcing IT to another company. I would personally argue that it costs you more in the long run, but that’s me…If you really do want to keep up-to-date on your own, there is a program I can suggest to make your life easier. PatchMyPC Free Updater is a program that will automatically look for installed programs and install any necessary updates. It does not perform Windows updates, and it has to be run manually, but instead of downloading and running each program separately, this one can do it all in one click. Download it to the desktop and run it every week on each machine to make sure things stay current!

What else needs to be checked?

Beyond running security patches, it’s important to keep your business moving forward. Here are a few areas our techs look at as part of managed services:

Hardware health: The last thing you want is days of downtime after a piece of hardware dies a spectacular death, dragging other components down with it. By not staying on top of your hardware health, you’re opening yourself up to lost productivity, lost income and unknown delays. Remote monitoring software can immediately alert to failures in critical components like hard drives.

Operating system expiry: While it’s great that you have a preferred OS, keeping it after the manufacturer ceases support can leave your business wide open for attack. It’s simply not a good combination. If you are still using Windows XP or Vista in your business environment, we need to talk!

Legacy programs: Updates to your software have the potential to disrupt older programs, either resulting in errors, slow performance or even downtime. With technology advancing so fast, we often find additional requirements with an update, such as extra processing power, memory or graphics.

Filed Under: Maintenance, Tips Tagged With: outsourcing, preventative maintenance, updates

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