Technology can resolve many issues for your business, especially when they get in the way of your operations. In fact, your technology plays a pivotal role in ensuring that your business can run at optimal efficiency without being held back by common pain points. Today, we want to discuss ways your organization can and should implement managed IT to solve common issues in your business’ operational infrastructure.
Lack of IT Leadership
Most business owners don’t know anything about how technology works, or at least don’t know enough about how it works to make the important decisions related to it. They pay their staff for their expertise, but what happens when businesses don’t have someone to fill this role? That’s right; they are held back, and the business cannot evolve or grow as a result.
Getting management on board with IT leadership is imperative. This includes keeping open lines of communication between the top brass and your IT resource to work toward proactively implementing solutions and resolving problems before they become major challenges later on.
Establishing Lines of Communication
Miscommunication happens in business, but the right tools can go a long way toward limiting it. Businesses need to have clear channels of communication from management to every single part of the business, whether it’s your employees or your clients, and the same can be said from the client’s perspective as well. This type of infrastructure can be difficult to set up, let alone maintain.
You can work around many of these issues through strategic implementation of a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software that can automate many of the processes normally associated with this task. This frees up your staff to provide the levels of support your clients expect.
Furthermore, businesses can use tools like Voice over IP (VoIP), instant messaging, collaboration applications, and other platforms to keep everyone involved and in the loop, regardless of where your business is going.
Too Many Tasks, Not Enough Hands
IT is important for today’s businesses, and when your IT team has so much to handle, you just can’t get as much done as you need to get done. This can mess with your project implementation timelines or your refresh cycles, further impacting your operations due to neglecting important maintenance. And that’s not even mentioning the requests from your staff, who might be putting in service requests for this very reason, further bogging down your IT staff. It’s a vicious cycle.
One solution is to use a task management platform to track what your IT team is scheduled to work on. This is the solution most companies go with, as it can help IT decision-makers and other staff understand the challenges that can stem from an understaffed IT department. Another solution is to outsource some of the responsibility of your IT department to a third party to free up resources for other tasks that might be more in your team’s wheelhouse. With a co-managed IT solution, you can have your outsourced provider handle as much or as little as you need them to.
Security Should be a Top Priority
Security is crucial to any successful and sustainable business. If you’re not paying attention, hackers will take advantage of your negligence. Your IT department will be responsible for patching and updating your systems, but you also need to take responsibility for training your team to identify and avoid potential security threats.
Businesses also have to adhere to strict compliance laws and regulations, so it helps to have professional IT staff on hand who know what needs to be protected and how. If you combine effective security policies with effective training regimens, you will optimize your chances of success against the dangers of the Internet.
Compudata can help your organization handle all of its technology-related challenges. To learn more, call us at 1-855-405-8889.