Advertorial: Don't Go IT Alone

While big business isn’t immune to such problems, they tend to take an entirely different approach to computer network maintenance. Their potential for loss is so huge they just cannot allow having a situation where they wait for problems to occur and then fix them. This is the key to your future IT health too.

In order to reduce risk and costs, smart companies work to prevent problems before they happen.

And here is the big ‘gotcha’! If you already outsource your IT support, think carefully about the arrangement you have with your support provider. Many SMEs elect to either pay a computer service provider on an ad-hoc basis or buy blocks of support hours from them. It looks like a good deal, right? After all, why pay for things you don’t use?

Major problems can occur using this approach. Most computer support organisations make their money when your network has a problem. It isn’t in their best interests to do work that will prevent you from having problems in the first place. Well-intentioned they may be, but pro-active, preventative service is just not part of their offering. The bottom line is, they have little incentive to keep your network stable as there are competing objectives here—they actually profit from the failures and the problems that IT is causing your business.

As a result, many smaller businesses lurch from problem to problem and wonder why things never improve. Many will conclude that computers are always troublesome when in fact the opposite is true. Nine times out of ten, it’s not the computers; it’s how they are being managed or, more specifically, how they are not being managed that is the core of the problem. Wouldn’t it be better to work with a services organisation that makes money when you don’t have a problem?

Many businesses also think that it is better to stay with the ‘devil they know’. They are not particularly enamoured by their current service arrangements but believe it is too hard to change. This is another myth.

Professional services organisations have the tools and expertise to assess your network quickly and easily. From there, they can offer the right advice to stabilise your IT and start moving to a situation where your network is reliable and supporting your business objectives.