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Do you own a small or medium-sized business that has no IT staff employed? When your computer, printer, or internet is having issues, where do you turn?

Fiddling with the technology in your office for hours trying to get it to work is costing your business valuable time and money. It's also preventing you from completing important work and meeting deadlines.

How do you get around this? Enter: IT services. Hiring on IT support staff for your business is important. It allows you to focus on your work, without having to worry about what happens if your email won't send.

Let's dig deeper into why having an IT support staff benefits your company.

The Benefits of IT Services

If an hour passes with you trying to troubleshoot a computer problem to no avail, you know the frustration of technology malfunctions.

Unless you're trained, certified, or schooled for managing IT and troubleshooting issues, the normal individual doesn't know what to do when it comes to solving IT problems.

There are a host of things that can happen if you don't have the proper IT support for your business.

No Monitoring Around the Clock

If you don't have monitoring around the clock, a surprise will be there waiting at work the next day. To avoid these miserable surprises, hiring IT services take care of odd-hours.

Did you know that an hour of IT downtime for a business can cost over $100,000? Ensuring that your business is running smoothly and in good network health is critical.

To do that, your networks need monitoring and observation around the clock to catch issues immediately. Cyber attacks don't care about what time of day it is or if your business is open. They only care about what information they can steal and how they can get to it.

Using a network operating center is one way to make sure you have IT services at all times to stop costly attacks from happening. Or, catch them before they get too bad. Having a network operating center will allow negative performance or traffic from entering the business.

Hiring IT services would also enable you to have a help desk. Any employee experiencing an issue would be able to contact the help desk and get help without delay.

Cyber Attack Prevention

One of the most common reasons to hire IT services or build your own inside your business is for the purpose of keeping safe from outside cyber attacks.

Cyber attacks have detrimental effects on businesses. They can come in all forms, shapes, and sizes. The most common involve worms, ransomware, and viruses.

In the past 12 months, almost 75% of businesses have been hacked. The odds are not in your favor. Anyone of these attacks can hit your business and hurt your reputation, place a financial burden, impact client safety, and compromise information protection.

Having IT services on board will prevent and cease most, if not all, cyber attacks from ever entering your front door. IT staff can take the time to develop a protocol and put plans in place to protect your networks and IT infrastructure. They also make a plan of attack for what happens when you are fall victim.

If you don't have anyone devoting time to making these plans, you won't have a first or second line of defense against these malicious attacks.

What Happens to Your Data?

As mentioned above, if you don't have time or resources devoting to fighting off attacks and you don't have monitoring of your networks, your system is vulnerable. Being in this state means you most likely don't have a backup plan for disaster recovery.

Having a data backup is an important feature to have for all of your business data. Data loss can happen from a natural disaster or a cyber attack. Losing that important data could slow down your business, or unfortunately, end it.

Having to close down shop for short-term or long-term has significant financial repercussions. When you implement data backup plans, you avoid losing out on prospective customers and current clients alike.

The Cloud Is a Lofty Thought

What is the cloud and why is it important for businesses to have?

The cloud in technology isn't the same thing you see when you look out your window. Anything stored in the cloud exists in multiple locations across the world in networks of servers.

Cloud services don't run on your local computer or server–they are run from the internet. They can be accessed from any internet connection like an app or a web browser.

Almost all organizations today are using cloud services and storing important information in the cloud. IT personnel can help you set up cloud storage for your business.

It's important because you don't have to use actual hardware to store your data and files. If your company suffers from a natural disaster or a cyber attack, your data is safe in cloud storage. It won't be affected and can still be accessed by any internet connection.

Not only does it help with data backup and storage, ensuring your information is safe, it also improves productivity and collaboration. More than one member of a team can access the same file and save their edits, updating in real time. There is no need to save a version of a file, only to find out someone else edited another version of that same file.

Gone are the days of confusion and inefficiency. Your company also saves money by not having to purchase new hardware. You pay for cloud services and set-up but don't need to buy any physical components.

Do You Need IT Services?

After reading through this, you should have a pretty good idea of whether or not you need IT services.

If you don't have one of the components above, there's a good chance you would benefit greatly from having someone manage your IT.

If you're interested in learning more about managed IT support or how you can get your IT systems audited and improved, contact us today.