Lucy - BQ Magazine EditorTechnology is the beating heart of a modern business and you rely on it for virtually every daily task. We’ve grown accustomed to using tech so much that we don’t realise how important it is. We normally only notice its significance when tech issues arise.
Suddenly, the whole business stops. Everything comes to a standstill and you’re looking around wondering what to do. You can’t perform your job until the tech issues are solved – and every minute spent without a solution equates to money you might be losing. If your tech issues cause an hour of downtime, that’s one hour of your day that could’ve been spent engaging leads or securing sales.
Something must be done to stop this – and here are three ways to prevent business tech issues from creating severe downtime:
#1 Establish a partnership with an IT support service
Who are you going to call when a tech problem comes up? If you don’t already have a partnership with a professional IT support service, you need to get one. It saves time as you don’t have to go online and start researching support providers before deciding which one to contact. You already did this – and you simply reach out and message the service telling them of your issue. They’ll provide remote advice if necessary, or come down to your premises if the problem can’t be solved online/over the phone.
In other words, you have a tech help team ready to go at a moment’s notice. You could establish an in-house support team, but the costs of doing this are astronomical. Glassdoor says the average tech support salary is £27,274 per year, so you’ll be forking that out for every team member, plus benefits; it’s far too much!
#2 Create backup plans
While your tech support provider works on a solution, you can’t sit around twiddling your thumbs. Ideally, the problem is solved in minutes – but what if it’s a tricky one? You need to find ways of doing work while the issues are handled.
As such, you must create backup plans. For example, you’re having internet connectivity issues and they’re taking ages to sort. As a contingency, you use mobile data to connect all the devices and carry on working.
Or, your work PCs broke down due to some major system error. Nothing in the office works – but that’s okay, you have a backup plan and can use a laptop computer to work elsewhere until the problem is fixed.
Make multiple backup plans for all the tech issues you can think of. When they happen, you’re ready to try and get on with work as best as you can.
#3 Improve tech education to prevent issues
Prevention is usually better than finding a solution. If you want to stop tech issues from creating downtime for your business, start by providing better tech education to your employees (and yourself).
Ensure everyone knows how to use all the different hardware and software throughout your organisation. This can stop human error from causing big problems that take ages to fix. It will require some upfront investment – and may take up some of your time – but being proactive will stop you from needing to be reactive in the future.
Incorporate these three ideas into your business plans and you’ll never have to deal with severe downtime caused by tech issues again!
Photo by David Pupăză on Unsplash
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