Why Your Business Must Take a Proactive Approach to IT
If you’re like most businesses today, you rely heavily on technology to support your daily operations. When your systems stop working properly, productivity grinds to a halt, employees and customers become frustrated, and your bottom line suffers.
A singular IT disaster can set your company back months, decimate your budget, leave staff struggling to pick up the pieces, and seriously risk damaging your reputation. From data loss to network malfunctions, downtime due to IT issues costs businesses in excess of $1.5 million each year in terms of lost productivity and sales.
There are two primary ways of addressing IT support for any business: the reactive approach and the proactive approach.
Some might argue that a reactive approach has its benefits. Common wisdom says that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” If your business is tight on cash, you may be seeking ways to cut expenses – and in general, you don’t see the point in paying for something you might not need.
With a reactive approach to IT support, when something goes wrong you try to get in touch with a technician to come and check your systems, then wait for them to resolve the issue.
The problem with this working model is that it can lead to significant downtime. The technician will first need to analyze the problem before they can get to work on it. If updates or replacement hardware are necessary, business operations could be disrupted even further until the upload or order is completed.
Reactive IT support staff often don’t have the right tools in place to keep tabs on the end user’s experience, instead relying on issues being reported as they crop up.
According to a recent study by Forrester Research, 35% of the time IT support first learns about issues when end users contact the service desk and open a ticket. This is because their support is reactive rather than proactive.
In order for your business to be able to foresee the challenges that may lie ahead, you need to take a more proactive approach to your IT needs. Proactive IT support allows you to better manage your IT budget, secure your data, and avoid some of the major technology risks that your business faces today.
Through continuous monitoring and real-time analytics, proactive IT support provides excellent insight into your IT infrastructure and endpoints from the end user’s perspective. Potential problems are spotted early and resolved before they can jeopardize your business.
Businesses that opt to outsource their IT needs to a managed services provider (MSP) can expect to save time, money, and stress in the long run. MSPs continuously monitor a company’s infrastructure in search of would-be problems and work to remedy those issues before a major catastrophe occurs.
What Is Reactive IT Support?
Let’s dive into this one a little bit deeper.
Reactive IT support involves taking measures to correct problems only when they materialize. It’s often referred to as the “break-fix” model. Under this model, when something goes wrong the business contacts IT support – whether it’s an in-house team or an external company – and makes arrangements to have the problem repaired as quickly as possible. The business is then forced to wait for the IT team to address and resolve the issue, all too often resulting in a great deal of downtime.
The cost of a provider agreement for reactive IT support tends to be lower than a fully managed plan, primarily because this support is implemented on an as-needed basis. If your business already employs in-house staff to provide general IT maintenance, partnering with a reactive support team gives your company access to highly skilled, reliable resources at a budget-friendly price tag.
Having a variable service agreement means you’ll only be billed for the time that’s spent fixing problems, and this can be a very attractive option for companies with limited financial resources. But there’s a catch.
The time that elapses between detecting a problem and getting it resolved can be hours or days, depending on the specific situation. In that time, significant damage could be done to your system. Since a typical IT project often surpasses its original budget by 45%, fixing an existing problem can be both cumbersome and costly for your business.
What Is Proactive IT Support?
Now, for the good news!
With proactive IT support, you can stay ahead of your technology problems. You don’t have to worry about losing productivity, damaging your company’s reputation, or tanking employee morale. Plus, it’s much more budget-friendly in the long run!
Proactive support is all about prevention – mending potential problems before they can snowball into much more severe issues. By proactively managing your IT support needs, you can empower your business to do more with its technology. You’ll get more out of your existing systems, establish new solutions in a strategic fashion, and develop long-term plans for business growth.
Key components of proactive IT support involve automating certain processes and monitoring technology assets to further streamline operations and make analyzing and identifying issues in advance considerably easier.
12 Advantages of Proactive IT Support Businesses
Proactive IT support offers several distinct advantages that can make a considerable difference for businesses. Here are 12 benefits of taking a more proactive approach to your IT needs:
Early Detection of Problems
Through continuous monitoring, your IT support partner is able to identify potential issues before they even occur. Resolving problems quickly prevents them from extending to other parts of your system. More often than not, a problem can be eliminated and maintenance carried out before it’s even detected by end users.
Increased Productivity
Employees and clients depend on your technology to help them achieve their goals. Software and hardware failures and other IT-related issues cause disruptions that can hamper productivity and foster frustration for all parties involved.
Solving issues proactively means less time sitting around waiting for repairs to be completed. Reducing the risk of downtime empowers your workforce to be as productive as possible.
Productivity and happiness go hand in hand. Giving your staff the right tools for the job creates a more harmonious, happier workplace.
Upgraded Cybersecurity
A proactive IT support team can manage every aspect of your cybersecurity, from software updates to employee training.
They’ll create security plans, protect your network against basic threats, and outline steps to take if systems are breached.
Managed antivirus and antimalware programs help keep viruses and malware at bay, while strategic backup procedures ensure that data loss doesn’t occur.
Predictable Costs
Most managed services providers offer their services for a fixed monthly fee which covers ongoing monitoring, maintenance, and updates, making it easier to budget your IT expenditures accurately and strategically.
You may pay more in a given month than your would in a variable fee arrangement, but you’ll also incur fewer costs as a result of downtime. When tech problems inevitably arise, you won’t have to worry about an unexpectedly high bill for repairs.
Having your systems continuously monitored keeps your infrastructure in good working order at all times. It’s always cheaper to prevent technology failure than it is to clean up the mess afterward.
Team of IT Professionals
When you partner with a managed services provider for proactive IT support, you have an entire team of certified IT experts at your service, instead of just one or two individuals whose daily grind consists of putting out fires or solving routine problems.
These IT specialists recognize how each device on your network plays an essential role in the operations of your company.
Having a team in place to keep an eye out for problems and handle them in a timely manner gives even smaller companies the IT support strength of much larger institutions.
Better Decision-Making
Before the onboarding process even begins, an MSP will perform a strategic analysis of your IT infrastructure to identify any areas of weakness that could impede optimal performance.
Based on automated tools provided by the MSP, you will be able to make informed decisions about your specific IT needs.
Having all the information presented clearly in front of you puts you in the driver’s seat, making it easier to see when you need to scale up.
Strategic Planning
From carrying out thorough risk assessments to inventorying your IT assets to updating your software and hardware to align with your business goals, MSPs are fully equipped to handle all strategic aspects of your IT.
A proactive strategy allows you to adapt to a changing business environment and meet future challenges head-on. MSPs will work to head off issues that can not only crop up again but worsen over time.
Regular Updates & Patches
Many successful cyberattacks rely on unpatched hardware and software. A proactive update schedule minimizes opportunities for hackers to intrude on your systems.
The most recent patch may also add new features that could improve overall performance.
Proactive upgrades are particularly beneficial for maintaining older technology that may be more vulnerable to attacks. MSPs can schedule these updates for ideal times, ensuring that servers won’t go offline at inappropriate times.
Regulatory Compliance
Understanding how your company performs with regard to regulatory compliance is a fundamental facet of proactively protecting your company and its data.
Regulatory compliance can safeguard your company from unwanted fees and preserve your customers and employees from impending data breaches.
24/7/365 Monitoring
Remote monitoring of your workstations, servers, routers, printers, and other network devices keeps your IT network in good shape at all times.
Knowing that a team of skilled computer experts is regularly testing your systems and thoroughly evaluating them for a wide range of potential problems gives you and your employees peace of mind.
When the team is alerted of an issue, they start working on a fix immediately, often without you even noticing it.
Software problems can generally be fixed remotely, while hardware issues typically require a technician who is physically present on the premises.
Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity
Major events such as fires, floods, hurricanes, and cyberattacks are a hazard to all businesses.
A reliable MSP will set up a robust disaster recovery plan for your business and implement software solutions that will keep your business up and running.
All data is backed up regularly so that, in the event of an emergency, your most crucial information is completely safe and easily accessible.
Around-the-Clock Help Desk Support
Most managed services providers offer 24/7/365 help desk support as well.
Not only does this come in handy whenever there’s an after-hours incident, but it also allows your internal IT staff (if applicable) to focus on projects that add value to the business rather than running around troubleshooting everyday problems.
Final Thoughts
Managing the health of your IT systems in a merely reactive way is like managing your own physical health reactively. Like many health issues, most IT issues can be detected by early warning signs that could be picked up through proactive monitoring.
By analyzing your business and identifying the gaps, weak points, and strengths, a managed services provider can better determine how to protect your company from emergency expenditures, last-minute crises, unexpected downtime, cyberthreats, data loss, and compliance issues.
When partnering with an MSP, you can count on effective monitoring and maintained functionality of your network, enhanced overall performance of your IT infrastructure, reduced downtime and increased productivity, ongoing support whenever you need it, and more time to devote to your core business.
Taking a proactive approach to IT doesn’t make your problems go away. But it will make them easier to plan for and simpler to manage.
DataGroup Technologies is the premier managed IT services provider in the area, delivering ideal IT solutions to businesses of all sizes.
We strive to provide significant value and outstanding service to all of our clients by acting as an extension of your business’s IT team.
If your organization could benefit from the many advantages of managed services, including proactive IT support, call us today at 252.329.1382 or drop us a line here!
