Modernizing IT for Small and Midsize Businesses
Small and midsize businesses (SMBs) are growing rapidly in this market.
With the current state of the economy, competition to attract and retain customers and employees is stiff. In order to succeed and last, SMBs need to be agile and modernized. That starts with IT. Modernizing your IT can help SMBs grow, scale and excel in a challenging economy. Investing in IT can make your business more efficient and is more cost effective over time.
Managed IT
Leveraging managed services is a great way to start transitioning your IT to a more scalable, convenient model. Working with a Managed Services Provider (MSP) gives you immediate access to trained IT experts – without the overhead of assembling an entire IT staff of your own. Services like live chat and 24×7 support make this an excellent choice no matter what your industry is or what hours your team works.
This flexible model can be either co-managed or fully managed, depending on whether your organization has some technical team members or you’re starting from scratch. Either way, it’s a great way to save on IT while ensuring your environment is properly – and professionally – managed. It’s also a great way to access highly skilled, hard to get technical talent in an extremely competitive market without breaking the bank.
Scalable Options
Managed IT services aren’t the only adaptable technology these days. Audit what you’re currently using and what you see a need for. In addition to identifying gaps, this will help you discover opportunities to switch to subscription and per-seat (user- based) models. Subscription services don’t just help you avoid the initial capital expense, they also help you easily and quickly adjust when there are changes to your business. Whether it’s a sudden influx of customers, the need to change tools, or team members coming or going, paying per user helps eliminate unnecessary costs and long-term contracts in many cases.
Enable Flexibility
After the pandemic, we all know how important flexibility is to businesses. As a managed services provider(MSP), we witnessed firsthand how challenging it was for organizations to quickly transition their tools and processes if they didn’t already have remote flexibility. Being able to pivot how your organization functions is integral to long-term success. That’s where cloud and hybrid environments come in.
With a secure, correctly configured and professionally managed cloud environment, you’re able to drastically change things like where you work and how you work, without losing the ability to help clients as you change and grow. Even in organizations where onsite is still a requirement for many jobs (like manufacturing and healthcare), there are plenty of functions that can be done from anywhere, securely, if you’re using a cloud or hybrid environment.
Build In Business Continuity: Have a Plan and Backup Strategy
Every business owner hopes they’ll never face a crisis that causes them to need disaster recovery services, but unfortunately that’s not something you can predict – or prevent. What you can do is create an IT environment that enables you to recover quickly, minimizing downtime and loss of productivity.
Regardless of the backup method you choose, having a secure solution in place is a key part of a modern IT environment. When your environment is configured with these things in mind, it can be much more cost-effective than trying to find a solution that fits in later.
Being able to quickly and effectively recover from unforeseen issues can mean the difference between retaining business or losing it.
Don’t Skip Cybersecurity
The last piece of the puzzle when it comes to modern, flexible IT is cybersecurity. Proactive services can put you in a better position to prevent cybersecurity threats and mitigate risk. Ensuring your systems are properly secured, managed and maintained is one of the most important things you can do.
If you’re going to invest in cybersecurity, we recommend starting with a Security Risk Assessment to see where your current gaps are. At the very least, an endpoint detection and response (EDR) solution should be in place to help protect against today’s more advanced threats. Don’t make the mistake of thinking antivirus is enough to keep your systems safe – threats have evolved, and your technology needs to as well.
These are just a few ways you can create more secure, scalable, flexible IT environments that enable you to stand out from the competition and meet your business goals. Modernizing your IT is an attainable goal – one we’re happy to help with.
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