Thanks to the increased penetration of computing devices and software in businesses, there is an ever-growing need for small businesses to have an IT support service that can effectively manage data security, backup and disaster recovery, asset management, security process, and proactive processes. This allows the small business to have enhanced productivity while incurring better returns on capital investment.
Shared below are the processes that can be implemented if better support for small business IT support is required.
Backup and Disaster Recovery
Let us examine a scenario – in the year 1999, Bell Canada faced its worst power outage due to a fire breaking out at their installation. This resulted in an hours-long communications outage that left hospitals, businesses, schools, and residences in the lurch. Whether or not such disasters can be avoided is a different discussion, but businesses should be prepared for such eventualities. Any small business should have a backup and disaster recovery process in place so that it continues to thrive even after being hit by a disaster.
Asset Management
Any business needs assets to operate successfully and while they are at it, they also need to protect such assets. The protection of the assets is done by implementing an asset management process that provides for the optimum utilization of the assets while also keeping nasty surprises away. An asset management process also identifies those assets that are nearing the end of their operational life cycle and need to be replaced. This process also helps you set up the maintenance cycle for your small business. Finally, an asset management process helps small businesses to complete their asset requirements with the unused available resources instead of purchasing new ones. This helps in saving money for a small business.
Security Process
The world is witnessing millions of data breach events each year. This means that if a business needs to prosper, it needs to manage its security process in the best possible manner. With the highly volatile market conditions, it becomes naturally difficult for small businesses to effectively analyze and detect data breaches and other IT risks. By using best practices in security processes, a business controls access to sensitive information. There are various methods such as implementing strong password policies, controlling who has access to product secrets, and protecting customer information that can build a comprehensive and effective security process.
Proactive Process
Most small businesses focus on the reactive elements of a process such as how quickly can a support issue be resolved or how fast can the servers come back online after a crash. Most businesses overlook the proactive elements of their IT process. This can be attributed to the difficulty in quantifying proactive processes. Certain processes such as software updates, preventive maintenance, and hardware audits are the key components of a proactive process and they prevent the problems from occurring in the first place so that you don’t have to commit additional resources in solving those problems.
The aforementioned four ideas are some of the best processes for improving IT support services for a small business. You can look for additional improvement measures.
