Why Your Business Needs Technology Support Professionals

By David B. Lobocki, Essential Technologies LLC

I am often amazed at the state of computer systems found in most small to medium size businesses networks. Spyware, adware, malware, poor security, you name it! Why is this so?

Business owners often find themselves in a situation where they need to do everything. They are their own IT person, writer or even delivery person. Sometimes they have had their next-door neighbor setup up their peer-to-peer network. Maybe they had a computer person set things up and then tried to maintain the network on their own. There are many reasons.

What it all adds up to is that you may have a network with many security problems and poor performance.

Poor performance can lead to lost productivity due to lost data or hardware and software problems. If every time you start MS Word it takes five minutes to open up, and you open it four times per day, you could loose as much as twenty minutes per day. That is over 120 hours per year for just one application and user! A system heavily infected with adware and spyware can easily take this long to startup or shutdown programs, if it does not crash frequently.

The security side can be even more problematic. Do you maintain customer data on your network? If you do, you may have a legal responsibility to safeguard that data. Failure to do so could open your business up to litigation.

So what do you do?

Well, you could do what larger companies do; turn the problem over to your IT department. But what if you do not have an IT department? Well you could call ‘George,’ the guy who setup your network in the first place. George is the “computer technician” who failed to setup your network security, when he created your network.

One of the advantages of having your own IT department is they become familiar with your operations and can quickly resolve any problems that pop up. So, how can you take advantage of having your own IT staff without the added cost of additional personnel? Hire an IT support company, such as Essential Technologies, a newly launched subsidiary of Warady & Davis LLP, for the service.

Why should you contract for your IT support? One reason is you may not have a need for a full-time onsite technician. If you only have a need for a technician 2 hours a week, do you want to pay a full forty hours for a junior skilled employee that can’t handle today’s more complex networks? Essential Technologies can also provide most fixes quickly using remote access tools without having to come on-site. You enjoy similar response time as if you had your own in-house IT staff but without the overhead.

At Essential Technologies, we believe that small to medium sized businesses that do not have a dedicated IT department deserve the same technical service and support as large companies. Essential’s commitment is to provide the same level of speed and quality IT service that larger organizations enjoy at a fraction of the cost of a dedicated IT professional.

Now you can give your business a “corporate” IT department even if you are not a big corporation. I have seen clients who make high six figure incomes spending their time fixing computer problems. Ask yourself, is my time better spent fixing a computer or should I call in a specialist and spend my time making money for my business?

I vote for making money.