As a small business, there might not always be a typical day at the office. It’s common for your team members to wear multiple hats, getting dirty in many different areas of the business. We understand that there’s not much time to focus on important tech processes when you’re trying to run your business!

We understand, we’re small business owners too. At Netsafe Solutions, we specialize in helping companies like you set up a streamlined IT infrastructure so you can save time and concentrate on key business activities.

In our client engagements, we often see a couple of scenarios that would justify why your small business needs a managed IT service provider.

First, your team might be traveling often or work remote.

In today’s digital world, more and more companies are making it easy for employees to work remotely. As a small business, you should have standard technology processes to protect your company from cyber attacks, prevent data loss and reduce risk. Whether your team is in the office, at home or at client offices, you’re going to be more remote or are traveling often, your employees’ laptops need to be secure. 

Why?

• Working remote increases your chances of cyber attacks. Companies with employees who work remote are at a higher risk because public networks are risky and vulnerable to cyber attacks.

• There’s a higher chance of data loss. With remote employees, we find that there is less control of what is happening to the computers being worked on. Few software updates, less security protection, and more risk.

Second, data loss or theft can cause permanent damage to your brand.

Data loss is still a common issue for many SMBs. For example, your employees might be saving information locally. Unless you have a system in place to backup your data, we find that the small guy loses important documents like QuickBooks, critical financials or client data. So even though you have an elaborate backup strategy at the corporate office, incidences of local saves, archive failures, and non-updated software still happen. Then, when the data disappears, whether it was from system failures like a hard drive failure, data theft or computer theft, financial, legal and brand reputation problems tend to follow.

Losing private data, especially your client’s data, damages small businesses even more so than large, well-established companies. In fact, if and when a data-loss story reaches the public, bigger companies bounce back more quickly because they have the cash and a stronger brand to back them up. Small businesses on the other hand typically lack the cash, market share or brand presence, resulting in negative publicity that will damage the company considerably.

Third, you might be transitioning or outgrowing an internal IT service a “one-man” shop or an outsourced IT team.

In a growing small business, you need to be able to maximize performance and minimize costs so that you can get the most out of your employees and keep your business efficient.

• You might be transitioning for cost savings and efficiency. Your managed IT service provider improves your tech stack to help your business run smoother. When you work with an IT service provider, they analyze everything from your hardware costs, to your software and network costs, to cloud solutions and maintenance costs. Then they will create a plan and strategy that will not only help your business run smoother, but reduce costs.
• Or maybe you want to help your employees operate at a higher productivity level. Small businesses typically use many different apps including productivity, email and chat, web, design software, internet, business applications, etc. To keep all of these systems under control, an experienced IT technician knows the right processes to set up to keep your business running and computers running smoothly.

In either case, we understand that you just don’t have the time to continue researching and answering all those computer or technology-related questions. (See if remote support is right for you here.)

Fourth, depending on the nature of your small business, you may need security measures to close deals.

While every industry is different, a good example of this is when small businesses have the opportunity to work with a Fortune 500 company. You can bet that during the due diligence process, their legal department will pound you with security measures that you will have to undergo to get their business. If you don’t have these security measures in place or fail to set it up when the situation arises, you could miss out on sales.

That’s why small businesses need an IT provider!

At the end of the day, we understand your challenges because we’re small business owners too. At Netsafe Solutions, we specialize in helping companies like you set up a streamlined IT infrastructure so you can save time and concentrate on running your business.