Managed IT Providers are crucial for your business
As a small business owner, you likely have a lot on your plate. Keeping your customers and employees happy and growing your business should be your main concerns; let someone else deal with the nitty gritty of managing your IT infrastructure.
In modern businesses technology isn't just a luxury, it's a necessity. And although we all use technology daily, it doesn't always make you an expert.
If something goes wrong with your business' technology, you might come to a stand-still and that could cost your business money. Getting your company on a managed IT plan could help your business' success in the long run.
Cost Effective
Most small businesses budget for essential software, hardware, equipment, cloud, and labor costs. These items are necessities and you'll be paying for them one way or another. And when these items are all outsourced to third-party companies, things can get complicated quickly.
Have you ever run into an issue and you ask you provider for help and they bounce you back to another provider? Imagine having all of these resources run by the same team that can communicate with each other to solve a problem for you.
With a managed IT provider, all of these resources have one point of contact. And your IT infrastructure is all under one roof. St. Louis Managed IT can also analyze all these moving parts and simply the process to be more efficient and cost effective.
Having a dedicated team to be the go-to for any IT issues or updates can save you time and money in the long run.
Increased Employee Productivity
Employees/payroll are typically the largest expense for a business and creating efficiencies in your technology could make them more productive.
For example, when it comes to cybersecurity, having a proactive approach could stop a malware attack that would halt your employee's work. Also, having up-to-date software and a cloud-based server could make your workforce more united allowing them to work for efficiently.
Every business is different and they all have unique needs but streamlining your IT to a managed IT company helps increase employee productivity.
Less Downtime
If your computer shuts down or you experience a network outage and you're helping customers or managing clients, you're out of luck. Everything comes to a stop until the issue is resolved or the computer is fixed. And every minute of downtime could be costing you money.
St. Louis Managed IT's professionals are hands-on and focus on keeping your company running smoothly. If you have a managed IT plan, your account team would respond quickly to resolve issues whether that be through remote access to maintain speed, or through an on-site visit.
Data Security
Your company's computers store a lot of personal data on them: personal information, credit card numbers, even bank routing numbers. Because of this, a ransomware attack can threaten your customer's trust in your business which could ruin many years of hard work you have done to gain your customer base.
Hackers cast a wide net when they use ransomware to find the weak spots in your system. Because of this, it's a matter of when (not if) you'll run into ransomware.
St. Louis Managed IT works with you to determine what type of antivirus infrastructure would be best for your business. Adding layers of security such as encryption can help to protect your company before an attack happens.
File Insurance
Being able to access all of your needed files is something many people take for granted. To ensure access remains available, it's important to have an automated backup system. Realizing your data is gone after a computer crash or a ransomware attack is a bad lesson to learn.
Without an internal IT department or a managed IT company to help you set everything up, you may be missing vital pieces to your file saving and storage setup. If disaster were to strike, years of work and customer data could be gone in an instant. If you don't have automated backups and a team to restore any lost data, you could be at a loss in those moments.
With St. Louis Managed IT, you can be calm in those stressful moments knowing that your IT team can take over and resolve any issue. Your servers will have data backups that can ensure you're up and running in no time, with no or minimal data loss.
Frequently Asked Questions
If you think St. Louis Managed IT could be a good fit for your small business, give us a call for a free consultation.
If you have any more questions, please contact us.
Small Business IT Services and Technology Solutions
At St. Louis Managed IT, our team becomes an extension of your staff and works with you and your employees to keep your network and computers running smoothly.
The major advantage of working with a managed IT company is having experts on your team that understand how all the elements of your IT infrastructure work together. Our IT professionals can make small changes while being able to envision how it'll affect the other aspects at play.
Even with all the planning ahead, some technical elements come into play if your computer breaks down. Below are the ongoing technical services St. Louis Managed IT also manages.
Network Support and Management
Onsite Network Support & Management is an essential part of keeping your network and wifi up and running. Your IT partner will manage onsite network hardware, maintain a firewall for extra security, correspond with your network service provider, and act quickly when issues arise.
Working with a managed IT company makes any outage, hardware damage, office relocation, or technical issue a breeze. Allowing an expert to manage these tasks will take these duties off your plate and you'll never go back to managing it yourself.
Communication Management
IT Communication Management is necessary for companies in continual communications with other employees and with customers. With a growing business, it can be complicated to manage company emails.
St. Louis Managed IT can help you set up an email platform, transition to a new platform, or just help you scale your email communication with your growing business. Our IT professionals can also help you manage personnel changes like adding or removing users from your email platform.
Many companies also use VoIP (Voice Over IP) to correspond with people outside of your company network. Our IT professionals can install this hardware and integrate software products so your team can work efficiently.
Data Backup and Recovery
Data Backup & Recovery is an essential part of information technology services. Your IT provider helps to provide policies and procedures that continually back up your data. There are options for data backup and our IT professionals can help you determine which are best for your company whether that's cloud-based or onsite server storage.
Your backups only work if they are secure and our IT professionals install security measures to protect from data theft. If needed, St. Louis Managed IT's experts can work quickly to recovery any data so your company experiences minimal downtime.
Server Support and Management
As your company grows, Server Support and Management becomes more and more necessary. Your IT provider sets up your server for easy communication but also streamlined file sharing.
Your IT provider can assign permissions, make shared files, and track employee activity. Behind the scenes, IT management maintains antivirus software, tracks storage figures, and releases updates. All of this allows for a safe server system that stores all of your important business information.
Data and Privacy Compliance
Data & Privacy Regulatory Compliance is extremely important for your company to follow, especially in regulated industries like healthcare. St. Louis Managed IT can help make sure your company's network is up to code and in the case of healthcare, is HIPAA compliant.
HIPAA compliant companies have to collect and store data in specific ways to ensure patient files are kept secure. This usually involves utilizing encryption, implementing data policies and procedures, having strong network security, and minimizing physical access to data.
Why Managed IT Support Services is Critical for Small Business Owners
Most businesses make decisions based on the budgets and resources they have available so partnering with a managed IT company can seem overwhelming. The overall value of having an IT professional as a partner will have you wondering how you made it work beforehand.
St. Louis Managed IT has custom cost structures to match your business' needs and can work on retainer or hourly billing.
Our goal is for our IT professionals to operate as one of your team members. St. Louis Managed IT can help your company run as smoothly as possible by setting up a streamlined IT infrastructure and maintaining your company's IT so you don't have to worry about it.
Trust the experts with such an important part of your business. Give us a call for a free consultation and estimate.
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