One of the biggest pushes in today's workforce is for better work-life balance. Businesses big and small have started to realize the value of having extra time to spend with family or on personal projects. This is especially true after so many workplaces went remote during the pandemic.
As crucial as it is to take your vacation time and much-needed rest, you may be surprised to learn how your IT strategy can impact your ability to do this. As an explainer, here's how handling all IT operations under one roof makes balancing work and life challenging for you or your employees.
If you were to make an estimate of how much time you or your IT team spends getting to the bottom of tech issues, how many hours would it total up to? Even when technical issues are "resolved", they can pop up again unexpectedly, costing you extra time on the same problem.
Does your business have a big enough tech team to accommodate these challenges? Unless you have a fully-staffed IT team of cybersecurity experts, technicians, specialists, and team leaders, you most likely don't.
To compensate for a lack of sufficient support, you may take time away from tasks like focusing on customer acquisition or other revenue-generating activities. The bottom line: your business still needs to function, and piling on IT stress makes for long hours making up other work when you're behind.
To identify the biggest time-sucks in your IT operations, you must break down both the everyday and long-term tasks that could be eating away at your productivity.
A few of these will include troubleshooting, maintenance, budgeting, cybersecurity/compliance, and continued training for yourself or IT staff.
By far the most time-consuming aspect of technology management is day-to-day troubleshooting. This will entail simple fixes like password change problems as well as big issues like server outages.
When you're tackling day-to-day technical difficulties, you should ensure your team has the proper resources to minimize downtime. This means properly selecting, hiring, and training your IT team, or carefully choosing comprehensive IT support if you choose to outsource.
As technology advances, so does the need for IT specialists with the education, experience, and professional demeanor to problem-solve efficiently. To read more about what to look for in an IT provider, read our blog: 10 Questions to Ask Before Committing to a Managed Services Provider
Long-term IT project management is where many businesses struggle the most. This is partly due to the difficulty of building the right technology stack to both save money and optimize business operations.
Another reason business owners have trouble aligning their technology infrastructure with business objectives is that they simply don't have the time. When you're busy running your business, you likely don't have the bandwidth to take on large-scale digital transformation projects, replacements for hardware, and software updates.
When you take on too much at work, you can miss out on other important aspects of your life like spending time with family, exercising, or rest. This is why businesses are leaning towards IT outsourcing so leaders can take it off their plate to focus on other priorities.
Most people know how risky cyber-attacks are to their bottom line, and at times the survival of their businesses. Cybercriminals also know how costly data breaches can be, so they will often use ransomware to extort businesses with weak or sub-par cybersecurity.
Cyber attacks can also come at inopportune times, such as right before the holidays. Hackers purposely plan attacks on Christmas, Thanksgiving, or right before major holidays. This way, you are less likely to notice a breach and they can spend more time inside your network and operating systems to do more damage.
Many people suffer the anxiety of never being (or feeling) off the clock or unplugged when managing their business's cybersecurity. The enormous task of managing network security and mitigating risks 24/7 is stressful enough.
What's more, if your business falls victim to an attack, your life could get exponentially more stressful navigating disaster recovery. To learn more about diaster recovery and how it relates to proactive vs reactive IT, check out our blog: Incident Response vs Disaster Recovery: What's the Difference?
Part of preparing for new cyber threats and maintaining a competitive edge with technology is investing in ongoing education. With ever-changing software updates, brand-new tools, and complicated setup and integration processes, you or your staff will eventually need new training.
The costs of product certifications and courses can add up. The time needed for ongoing education can also pose a roadblock for busy IT staff or leadership with stacks of day-to-day work on their plates.
This is another reason why outsourced IT services for small businesses can be a game-changer. Managed service providers often already have certified specialists on their staff, which frees time for business clients to focus on their operations instead.
If you find yourself treading water with IT, you will feel relieved to learn that there are many strategies to streamline technology management. A few different approaches businesses are taking include managed IT and co-managed IT.
Managed IT refers to traditional outsourced technology services. With these service providers, you'll get both day-to-day and long-term planning support.
Some providers will even help you create technology roadmaps, or active plans to replace equipment on a cycle. This helps to prevent major malfunctions or cyber attacks from aging devices. You'll also get a designated Virtual Chief Information Officer (vCIO), who are experienced IT professionals with high-level skills in technology management.
To learn more about how you could leverage a vCIO and how they're a major benefit that comes with remote tech support for small businesses, read our blog: FAQ's About Virtual Chief Information Officers (vCIOs)
If you have an in-house IT team, co-managed IT might be just the solution for you. Internal IT teams are rarely equipped for the enormous task of securing, optimizing, and resolving issues with your business network.
Modern-day technology takes a lot of troubleshooting expertise, an advanced understanding of complex tools and cybersecurity practices, and many other specialized skills. For this reason, an outsourced IT company can help bolster your capabilities and offer additional support. This can help ensure your internal team isn't overwhelmed or underprepared for cyber attacks or outages.
To learn more about the different types of managed IT, check out our blog: What Are Managed IT Services?
Work-life balance continues to be a conversation worth having, and technology headaches only pile more stress on top of your already-long list of responsibilities. Luckily, there are specialized teams equipped to take this off your plate, with fully staffed service centers at your disposal.
If you're ready to learn how IT services could allow you to focus on bigger priorities instead of worrying about outages or security breaches, click the button below to speak with a specialist.