Without a dedicated IT support provider, SMEs can fall into the trap of spending their time solving internal IT issues themselves. With more than 1.6 million small UK businesses* successfully attacked by cyber criminals each year, this also draws business owners away from prioritising the growth of their organisation. Using an IT support company can increase your network stability to maintain constant accessibility for users and removing the burden for your employees.
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It’s hard to ignore the rise of cyber-crime in the last decade with 65% of medium size businesses experiencing a security breach in 2021 alone**. Protection against these threats is critical for the following reasons:
Spending too much time on your IT support could have implications for the long-term goals of your company and could reduce your competitive advantage. Small enterprises do not have enough employees to delegate IT support tasks to. When they do, it hinders their input to the business strategy, such as improving customer service; 77% of customers*** believe good customer service is critical to creating brand loyalty.
Comprehensive IT support requires strong expertise to be executed effectively. If an employee undertakes this task without the necessary experience, various issues could occur:
Neglecting development of the business strategy by assigning a significant amount of time on IT support will also hinder personal development of employees. They will have less time to learn new industry-specific skills that will increase the likelihood of future business success.
The working environment has developed remarkably since the beginning of the pandemic. More than 85% of employees**** now want to adopt a hybrid model where they incorporate both home and office work which has had a profound effect on current IT systems. For example, many businesses have adopted cloud-based phone systems and unified communications services, such as Microsoft Teams, with remote access to office-based servers so employees can work seamlessly from home.
Using new solutions can create IT issues therefore the time spent on support would likely increase, steering employees away from achieving their strategic business objectives.
Cyber security companies are seeing an increase in data loss as a result of more businesses using cloud storage; 37% of SMEs***** have lost data in the cloud. Employees with little to no IT support experience may not implement a data backup strategy which would be detrimental to the business, resulting in:
Relying on your staff or a one-man band support structure can negatively affect a business in multiple ways as discussed above. Outsourcing your tech support to a specialist IT support provider will release the burden that is holding back your business, allowing you to focus on strategic objectives and the input of fresh ideas rather than attempting to solve IT problems in the dark.
IT infrastructure and support are critical to ensuring your business runs smoothly and securely, and it is important to ensure adequate measures are in place where employees have chosen to work from home permanently or have adopted a hybrid approach.
We can assess your current IT support and security measures by generating a traffic light report that highlights any major issues that require immediate attention, as well as less important projects that can be addressed later. Nearly all the support tickets for swcomms are responded to within 10 minutes, thus minimising the issues that affect organisations.
If you would like to spend less time on worrying about your IT and more on growing your business, please do not hesitate to contact us.
*UK Cybersecurity Statistics You Need To Know
**Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2021
***State of Customer Service in 2021
****Business and individual attitudes towards the future of homeworking, UK: April to May 2021