Common IT Problems Faced By SME’s & How To Fix Them

IT maintenance may not be your primary focus when running a business, however to achieve your goals it can be shrewd to consider how to avoid the disruption caused by business IT problems before they strike.

Your IT infrastructure and the associated software has literally become absolutely mission critical when it comes to the day to day management of your business. For example, how much harder does your day become if your emails suddenly stop coming through on your iPhone? It really is the last thing any business professional wants or needs.

In this article, we look at the common IT problems faced by business owners and how you can effectively manage them around your busy day!

1. Loss Of Account Access

The levels of online and mobile fraud have increased massively with the adoption of modern technology. Even in more recent times online fraud has increased by 80% since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. To combat this, increased security measures have been added to many of your online accounts such as your social media profiles and emails.

Two Factor Authentication is the most common of these measures, where the website in question sends you a code by SMS text to verify your identity across two different elements. Whilst this is great many online users have old phone information associated with their account, or another staff member’s details, so when this is requested then are unable to access their account – causing massive problems!

To avoid this you should firstly check all of your numbers and make sure they are up to date. You can also use a range of secure services online to store this information. As part of a small business IT support plan, your provider would also keep on top of all this information for you.

2. Data Disasters

We have all accidentally deleted a file at some point, it’s frustrating to say the least. But what about losing a laptop? Your server crashing? Or even experiencing a flood, fire, power cut or any other data disaster? What would the impact be on your business? Loss of valuable data, lost sales, unhappy customers, employee downtime, the costs can be immense.

Having the right data backup and disaster recovery procedures in place for when these events occur is critical in avoiding unnecessary downtime and expenses. When planning this out, make sure you choose multiple locations for your backups. So for example if you back up your data in. the cloud via a service like Dropbox or Google Drive, you should ideally also have this data on an external hard drive too.

3. Cyber Attacks

Hackers are becoming more sophisticated and small businesses are now being targeted more than ever. Small businesses in the UK bore the brunt of the £17bn cost of cyber attacks in 2018 with almost two-thirds of small UK companies with 10-49 employees the victims of cybercrime.

Think of all your confidential communications, supplier and customer details that are stored in your IT system. What would be the impact if this data fell into the wrong hands? Under GDPR legislation a security breach of personal data can lead to potential fines of up to 4% of turnover. Is not being protected worth the risk?

As part of your Managed Services program, we can provide you with the tools to minimise this risk of malicious attacks such as ransomware.

4. Poor Performance & Costly Downtime

Small businesses rarely have the time to keep on top of all the upgrades required for their various machines and infrastructure. Yet if they’re not kept up to date your systems will inevitably slow down, crash or be vulnerable to attack or infection.

Poor network speeds, slow computers or a network crash (which usually occur at the worst possible time!) can result in expensive downtime, frustrated employees and loss of productivity.

Ongoing preventative maintenance and monitoring is necessary to avoid this with upgrades implemented as they become available, stopping expensive problems before they start.

5. In-House IT Costs

Maintaining an onsite IT team is an expensive business. The average salary for an IT Manager in the UK is £38,780, not to mention the costs of recruitment, training, pensions and tax – and that’s just one employee.

There are many roles that an IT department needs to cover and if they don’t have the time or the budget they can end up spending their time fighting fires rather than proactively supporting business operations. Businesses can also find themselves stuck when an IT employee is off work.

With an outsourced IT solution, you can save the time and expense of hiring additional in-house IT staff whilst benefiting from easy access to a range of specialist technical expertise. Your IT partners will be there to provide support whenever your onsite IT resource isn’t available.

6. Stress

Running a business can be stressful with so many plates to keep spinning. It can be easy for IT management and maintenance to get lost in the daily grind which can lead to critical problems further down the line. This with why more businesses with some internal resource are choosing to outsource their IT support for SMEs – allowing the team of focus on growth and not just fixing problems. This support can even be guaranteed through an effective Service Level Agreement.

A cost-effective solution is outsourcing. By partnering with a Managed IT Services provider, you can enjoy the peace of mind needed to focus on what your business does best whilst we provide your outsourced managed IT support services.