Small businesses often struggle with information technology support because they don't have the budget to hire IT staff in-house. Even if you can't afford to establish your own IT department, if your business uses computers and networking, you need to have support for them. Hiring a business IT support company to handle these services for you is often a cost-effective alternative.
Determine Your Support Needs
Before you select an IT support service for your business, you need to take a look at the level of support you are going to need. If you have a very small company with just a couple work stations, you may not need a lot of help. Companies with internal networks, servers, and a lot of work stations are on an entirely different playing field and may need a much larger support system to keep everything on track.
You may need to talk with the support company about your needs and let them tell you what they can offer you. In many situations, the IT support company has a package in place already that covers small to medium businesses at a price that they can afford.
Remote Support
Most IT support services that you hire are going to be off-site companies and will handle your support needs remotely. For most small companies, this works because they don't have the space or the budget to have the IT staff on site. It does limit IT solutions to software support, but for a new small business, your hardware is most likely pretty new and shouldn't give you a lot of problems anyway.
Networking Infrastructure
A small business that needs a dedicated network for employees to connect, or for network storage, may benefit from remote networking. Cloud storage may be something that your IT service company offers and it can be an easy way to have the network you need, at a cost that is affordable. Once the company grows, you may find a dedicated server and internal network offer more benefits, but for now, that may be overkill for your company's needs.
if you are not sure what your network and storage needs are, talk with your IT service provider about options. Any good IT company will have insight to offer that is current and relevant for your company.
Remote Workstations
If you have remote workstations or people working at home from a laptop or other device, make sure that you include them in the IT services. It is important for people working on the go to have access to help if they have a problem, just as if they were sitting in your office. IT support can cover many different scenarios and situations for your company.
Share25 October 2019
I recently switched my internet service provider. Once I switched, I was very happy with the speed and service. The internet moved so fast for me that I was on it playing games and messaging friends a lot more than usual. What I forgot was that I chose my internet package based on my past monthly use of the internet, which was low simply because our old service was so slow I didn't like using it much. I chose a package that was limited, and I realized my mistake when I used up all my plan data in just two weeks. Thankfully, my new provider allowed me to switch to unlimited mid-month. I created this blog to remind others to always keep an eye on their internet usage if on a restricted plan and call your provider if you need to change it.
