Are you losing precious business hours due to a lack of IT support?
Businesses often reach a size where their reliance on IT has increased, but the in-house IT resources are insufficient or non-existent and are therefore poorly equipped to cope with IT hiccups and disasters. it is at this point where, in order to avoid the loss of precious business hours, it is critical to ensure that your IT system is either robust enough to cope with server problems, unexpected crashes breakdowns and loss of data, or you have a local, easily contactable IT resource on hand to assist you through the problems at a moments notice.
Business owners are often unaware just how many man-hours they may lose when these problems occur and it is advisable for businesses to take a straw poll from employees to find out how often IT problems have lost them work time, and to calculate an estimate of overall lost hours throughout a given month. Based on the results of such a survey it can often be eye-opening to discover that the cost of setting up local IT support is negligible in comparison with the interference, frustration and lost hours cause by in-house IT problems.
Useful questions to ask your staff within such a survey consist of:
The results of such a survey can even often reveal that even very large companies who have a dedicated in-house IT resource, are in fact failing to support their own employees by prioritising larger scale projects given to the IT department by higher management, whilst simultaneously failing to support ground level staff who are often the foundation of, and the nuts and bolts of, the business.
This particular issue is exceptionally common in large businesses where the IT department will simply defer to the command of the higher authority and ignore the day-to-day requests of general staff.
In summary, take the time to assess whether the IT provision that you have in house is sufficient for your needs. Small & start up businesses can establish a relationship with a local IT company and often use them on an ad-hoc call out basis at a cost-effective price.
Small to medium-size businesses should seriously consider having a support contract in place to ensure a timely and priority response to urgent issues which, unchecked, can end up costing the business a significant amount of money.
Large businesses should consider whether their in-house resource is divided in such as way that prevents critical day to day problems being rectified in an effective manner. Also consider whether staff are actually comfortable in requesting IT assistance when needed and even whether staff processes would be better served if the in-house IT function was to be coupled with an out-sourced additional resource.
Business owners are often unaware just how many man-hours they may lose when these problems occur and it is advisable for businesses to take a straw poll from employees to find out how often IT problems have lost them work time, and to calculate an estimate of overall lost hours throughout a given month. Based on the results of such a survey it can often be eye-opening to discover that the cost of setting up local IT support is negligible in comparison with the interference, frustration and lost hours cause by in-house IT problems.
Useful questions to ask your staff within such a survey consist of:
- Have you had any IT problems or computer problems this month
- Have you lost any data or documents due to a system or software crash.
- Have you had to re-do a task due to a PC issue?
- Has your job been made more difficult by software problems, server issues or program crashes.
- Do you feel sufficiently supported in IT issues?
- Do you feel you have adequate IT support when required?
- Do you feel that the time frame within which IT support is provided is satisfactory?
The results of such a survey can even often reveal that even very large companies who have a dedicated in-house IT resource, are in fact failing to support their own employees by prioritising larger scale projects given to the IT department by higher management, whilst simultaneously failing to support ground level staff who are often the foundation of, and the nuts and bolts of, the business.
This particular issue is exceptionally common in large businesses where the IT department will simply defer to the command of the higher authority and ignore the day-to-day requests of general staff.
In summary, take the time to assess whether the IT provision that you have in house is sufficient for your needs. Small & start up businesses can establish a relationship with a local IT company and often use them on an ad-hoc call out basis at a cost-effective price.
Small to medium-size businesses should seriously consider having a support contract in place to ensure a timely and priority response to urgent issues which, unchecked, can end up costing the business a significant amount of money.
Large businesses should consider whether their in-house resource is divided in such as way that prevents critical day to day problems being rectified in an effective manner. Also consider whether staff are actually comfortable in requesting IT assistance when needed and even whether staff processes would be better served if the in-house IT function was to be coupled with an out-sourced additional resource.
