It can be difficult for small businesses to navigate the waters of the technological world. Businesses are becoming increasingly reliant on IT technology to conduct even the most basic of tasks, like storing records. For that matter, businesses often need to advertise on the Internet. The Internet makes a lot of things easier, but it also opens up the possibility for information to be leaked or stolen, or even permanently destroyed. Sometimes, small businesses owners or employees run the risk of endangering the security of data simply because they don’t know much about IT solutions. Therefore, it’s important to look into IT outsourcing. Some small business owners are uncomfortable with the idea of outsourcing anything — but the fact is that those employed by IT consulting services are experts, and know more about what they’re doing the average small business owner or employee. Outsourcing your IT solutions is more than worth it, and can save you a lot of time, money, and stress. Below, we’ll look into some of the top reasons why small businesses outsource IT support. At some point or another, you will need to think about IT solutions; it’s better to be prepared ahead of time than find yourself scrambling for help at the last minute.
1. Security
Security is a major concern for any small business, whether the information involved is backed up with computer technology or not. Things like the Cloud have made it much easier for small businesses to store information — but they’ve also made it easier for criminals to steal that information. With that being said, it’s virtually impossible to efficiently run a business without using technology to back its information up, and you can store and back up your information safely. You may simply have to work with IT services to do so. With 20% of small businesses being hacked each year, your main concern should be installing things like firewalls to rebuff hackers. These are often fairly simple IT solutions, but not ones that you’ll want to handle without the help of experts — security is too important an issue to leave to the hands of amateurs. There should be a system put in place so that every time a piece of data is stored or backed up, it’s properly secured. This way, you’ll be able to easily access such information — but hackers won’t.
2. Data Loss
Data loss is a huge issue for small businesses, and it happens all too often. It’s estimated that 47% of data losses were due to users deleting information, 17% were due to users overwriting data, and 13% were because hackers deleted information. We’ve already addressed how to prevent hacking — often, data losses seem to happen simply because users made mistakes. You may think that the Cloud would prevent data losses from happening; but an estimated 47% of enterprises lost data in the Cloud and had to restore it from backups. See, this is why you can’t let security concerns keep you from backing up data. You never know when you might need it. IT support services can help you not only back up your data, but restore it if the original copy is lost. Sometimes, data backups can indeed be complex and difficult to understand — therefore, you might need the help of IT support simply to find that backup copy. As long as you have a backup, you should have much less to worry about than you would otherwise.
3. Web Design
Web traffic is crucial to the success of small businesses today. A great website can help a small business stand out and attract new clients, while a bad one can lead to them crashing and burning. With that being said, it’s important that small businesses have the best possible websites. Often, IT services can assist not only with security and data concerns, but designing websites. This is crucial to establishing and online presence and brand, and can change the way people view your business.