A Little IT Maintenance Saves A Lot Of IT Support

If you are a small business, you need your IT to work. As a small business owner myself, I believe we're in fact more reliant on technology than big business. Let’s face it, we really need to sweat our assets to help us to compete with big companies, and technology enables us to do this. We can deliver better customer service than the big boys, and react every bit as quickly as they can ... just as long as our IT keeps running.

Since the onset of the internet age, the speed of everyone’s business process has accelerated beyond anybody’s expectations due to email and E-commerce, so it hurts when your IT fails. What’s more I’m convinced that technology has its own sixth sense that tells it exactly the right time to throw a hissy fit to cause us the most inconvenience. It can be when I have to get a quote out, get some marketing material together for a deadline, or just when I want to clear everything up before I go home. That’s when the technology gremlin strikes! Fortunately I have my own support department at hand that I can call on when I need them. If you’re a small law firm, accountancy practice or marketing company, you may not have such a luxury!

When we get a call from a new customer, it is almost inevitably because ”the wheels have fallen off” their IT. We have even experienced one business owner who was scared of re-booting his Windows server in case it didn’t come back on again! I can understand business owners not wanting to take their time managing IT, but surely living in fear of a power spike is no way to run a business?

The idiom that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure is especially true when it comes to IT. If you only ever spend money on your IT when it fails I can only guarantee you that your IT will keep failing, and we all know the problems when that happens. Invoices don’t get issued, customer service can grind to a halt, and your sales person suddenly becomes an impromptu IT engineer. He may well know a bit about computers, but shouldn’t he be looking after your clients or chasing down new business? Your IT will work better and more reliably if you spend money on preventative maintenance. That way you will experience fewer failures, your blood pressure will be lower, and your salesman can get back on the telephone.

Am I biased? Well, I run an IT support company, of course I am! … But it’s hardly rocket science is it?

6 Valuable Tips to keep your IT Running Smoothly

IT is increasingly becoming a consumable service, and we aim to provide the most efficient service available. The way in which we do this is to use Best IT Practices to keep our clients' systems running as reliably as possible and to ensure that we are able to recover your systems as swiftly as possible when they fail. 

Like a lot of good practices, the procedures themselves aren't complex. If there is any magic to managing IT efficiently, it is in ensuring that the procedures are followed rigorously.

Even if you don’t yet feel that the time is right for you to outsource the running of your IT, the methods that we use will help you to make sure that you are on the right track if you manage your own IT. The practices listed below are no great secret. The question for you to answer is whether you want to employ your own staff to manage your systems, or outsource the process to a company like us:

Managing Workstations - Create a standard build for workstations on the network and store it on a network storage device. You can then use this image to rebuild workstations when necessary. This reduces rebuild time from 6 hours (by the time all of the Windows patches are installed) to less than 60 minutes.

Data Backup - PC's and servers will fail from time to time, and when they do you need to make sure that you can recover your data as quickly as possible. Server data should be backed up to online storage to ensure that you are able to recover in the event of flood / fire / theft as well as to an onsite server to ensure swift recovery in the event of a server failure. Workstation data will then be backed up to online or onsite storage as appropriate. 

Routine Maintenance - You should ensure that routine tasks such as disk defragmentation and clearing out temporary files is carried out on a regular basis to ensure that you get the best performance from your IT Systems.

PC Security - Check your PC's regularly to make sure that the latest Windows patches have installed properly and that your endpoint security / antivirus software is up to date. It is vital to keep Windows patches and virus definitions up to date to protect you against Internet threats. When a PC fails to install updates automatically, it is likely that some malware has infected your PC. In all probability, it will already be running more slowly than usual as a result of the malware infection, and the system should be reloaded as soon as it is practical to do so.

Keep A Spare PC - When a PC fails, the highest cost will be in loss of staff productivity while you are waiting for the system to be rebuilt. A spare PC preloaded with your company's standard build eliminates lost staff productivity. You simply restore data to the hard disk from the latest backup and your employee an be back up and running while the faulty PC is being repaired / rebuilt.

User Rights Management - Minimise the number of people who can install software onto your PC's. PC problems generally only arise when changes are made . By managing the change process you will be in a much better position to minimise and identify the source of system problems.

Many small businesses simply don’t have the time or resources to ensure that these essential housekeeping tasks are carried out on a regular basis, and that can be where the trouble starts. If you don’t have the latest Windows patches installed, your PC’s and laptops will be vulnerable to internet threats which can steal your employees’ identity and cause your systems to crash. If you don’t test that your backups restore properly, how can you be sure that they aren’t corrupt and that they will restore when you most need them?

That’s where we can step in as your outsourced IT Department, making sure that your systems run as smoothly as possible, and providing you with a single point of contact to resolve all of your IT issues.

If you would like to know more about our IT Support services, please visit our web site, or download our Managed IT Services White Paper. Alternatively please send an email to info@clearview.co.uk . We would be happy to answer any questions that you may have.