Tag Archives: MSP

5 Reasons Why Your Business Needs a Managed IT Service, Not IT Repair Service

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Executive Optimizing Well Performance Via Apps - Managed IT Service

Is it time to partner with a managed service provider and get out of the break fix environment?

Small businesses need all of the core infrastructure that larger businesses do. Your business needs a marketing team, salespeople, financial and legal analysts, and a help desk. But depending on how small your business is, all of those departments might be yours. Take one of those loads off your shoulders with a proactively managed IT service. Here’s why the plan is basically built for small businesses, especially compared to traditional IT help.

1. Your business is in the field, not in the office.

If your business offers a service that isn’t on-premises like a restaurant, then you and your coworkers will be spending a lot of time traveling. Instead of the traditional office setup of a desktop computer, printer, and modem, you might have a tablet and a VPN. That mobility means you can’t afford to be locked in one place as someone shows up to investigate the issue and make repairs.

Managed service providers, or MSPs, provide remote monitoring and preventative services instead. They monitor (without being invasive) potential network outages, malware and cyber threats, and signs of developing problems in your computers systems. When you’re operating off the cloud and through dozens of different apps and websites, that’s the service you need.

2. Every business is global, even when it’s local.

One of the best things about the Internet is that it opened up the international playing field for small businesses. Even if you run a business by yourself, you can do business everywhere from the United States to New Zealand. Your customers can be anywhere without the fees associated with international shipping and communication from even just a decade ago.

But that also means your business is open 24/7. A midnight website crash isn’t just a small problem anymore: it means your website was offline during some of your customers’ most active hours. A traditional IT repair service won’t send someone out until the next morning. They might even wait until the next business day. But a 24/7 software-based service is on top of the problem immediately.

3. Cyber threats consider small businesses to be low-hanging fruit.

Hackers usually aren’t aiming at a specific target. Instead, they’re looking for easy targets that get snagged in their nets and which require the least effort to break into. Small businesses, unfortunately, are prime targets because you have a lot of useful information but not a lot of resources to chase them down with. So make sure your company’s cybersecurity is too strong to make your company a tempting target.

4. Stay light with software protections instead of hardware fixes.

When you own a small business, you probably don’t want all of the heavy hardware investments that larger companies invest in. You don’t need an arsenal of backup computers, and you don’t need a dedicated floor full of internal servers. As more and more tools become virtual, that means your need for a physical IT service diminishes, too. Look for online solutions such as antimalware programs, cloud subscriptions, and VPNs instead of traditional measures.

5. Pay according to your company’s size, not according to man hours.

When you schedule a window for a traditional technician to come to troubleshoot a problem, you’re going to pay a transportation fee and by the hour. It’s going to be the same rate that every other company is paying; it might even be lower because larger companies can negotiate prices. But with an MSP, you pay based on the size of the network you want protected, and that means your monthly expenses are easier to manage.

Go to SystemsNet to learn more about managed IT services and why it’s the best move your company can make to protect itself.

What Your Customers Get From an IT Help Desk

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Smiling business woman working an IT help desk

No one likes using chat wizards when they have a problem, it’s frustrating

Providing great software is no longer enough to stay competitive in the modern online business culture. Between mobile apps and the full-funnel experience, any kind of technical problem can cause you to lose leads and frustrate customers who might otherwise glide smoothly through purchase after purchase. Incorporating an IT help desk is a great strategic decision for a growing company for the simple benefit of helping your customers use the website and mobile app as intended.

While this may sound small, to customers it can matter a great deal. Let’s take a closer look at the top four things that an IT Help Desk can bring to your customer experience.

A Human Answer to Frustrating Problems

When a website or mobile app doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to, customers get frustrated quickly. It only takes one or two extra clicks, waiting for the site to respond or load, before the situation feels completely ridiculous. For most customers, the first place they go is the help center, or even the chatbot in the corner. With an IT Help Desk on the job, a real human will be ready and waiting to take their question.

Talking to a real person immediately relieves some of the tension, especially when followed up with compassionate help. Whether it’s a login issue or a payment card error, a real human on the other end of the chatbox means a lot to customers when they need assistance.

Assistance Completing Purchases

Purchase completion is one of the most frequent sources of customer technical issues. This is because so many different exchanges are required to complete a purchase. They may not be able to save their address, their card may not be accepted even though it works for them everywhere else. Frustration during the checkout phase leads to cart abandonment unless customers have somewhere fast and helpful to turn to.

An IT help desk integrated into your website is the best possible way to save sales that are stopped by technical difficulties. In fact, you can even create triggers to alert a help desk team member if someone has reloaded or attempted to edit a payment page several times in a row. Offering and providing help in this critical moment can significantly reduce your instances of abandoned carts and lost customers.

Mobile App Support

If your business has a customer mobile app, an IT Help Desk team is even more important. Many modern consumers do everything through their phones and prefer to interact with apps over websites in most cases. These users are also familiar with the ability to quickly chat with or call a help desk and will assume this is an option for your app even if you don’t yet have help desk support.

A help desk can make sure that users of your mobile app are always able to use the features they love and troubleshoot problems in real time. You can even find and fix any bugs in your mobile app quickly because users have a friendly place to send reports. Which takes us to the final point:

Having Problems Solved Immediately

Bugs in websites and mobile apps can’t always be fixed immediately, but an IT Help Desk is the key to helping customers outside the bounds of the software. Solutions can be manually implemented for customers, and then long-term fixes can be worked into future updates of the software. An IT Help Desk is essential for making sure customers get the service they need, even in cases where that doesn’t work exactly right with the website or mobile app.

So what can an IT Help Desk do for your customers? They can provide real-time solutions, human assistance in frustrating problems, save purchases from technical difficulties, and provide support to mobile users. This is something any growing brand needs to consider providing in order to remain competitive and keep customers happy. For more on how to implement a great IT Help Desk for your customers, contact us today!

Advantages of managed IT Services

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Enterprise Client Activating Managed IT Services

Are you ready to partner with a IT Support Company?

Focusing on monetary profit in any business should be the priority of its owner or manager not becoming an IT expert. The more time dedicated to planning and carrying out new profitable strategies, the more monetary profit taken in. It’s not ideal for any business owner or manager to deal with computing problems on their own because, due to time loss, there will be less profit. Even if a business owner could miraculously learn all the technical and security caveats associated with their custom setup, it would take hours to manage and repair broken devices as needed. The following points highlight the advantages of outsourcing the management of computer maintenance and repair.

  • Cost Savings
  • Time Savings
  • Improved Security

Cost savings can show itself in various ways not merely by discounts that can be obtained by using managed IT service providers. For example, more harm than good could be done when attempting to apply repairs without a strong knowledge of the type of repair being done and the possible consequences. Generally, attempting to apply repairs or maintenance without a thorough understanding of what’s being done could result in damage which costs more than to have a professional repair it or better yet, to have a professional handle maintenance and repair before getting to that point. It’s not unheard of for business owners to find ways to manage their own technology with the end result of a disaster or very close to it. In general, it’s not recommended to self-manage an IT infrastructure without a thorough knowledge of the task at hand and possible consequences.

In any business, the saying, “time is money” applies. It means that any time spent working toward the goal of bringing in monetary profit is time well-spent but any time spent away from those same efforts is time lost and therefore, money lost. Everybody needs time away from doing business as a way of maintaining our well-being, but as it pertains to spending time on tasks that will not bring in monetary profit, that is generally considered time lost. Allocating maintenance and repair time to a service provider allows business owners and managers to do what’s most important focus on the income of monetary profit and personal well-being.

Performing IT-related jobs without sufficient qualification is not only a risk of wasted time and money, but it opens doors for compromising data security. Imagine this we think we’ve got a sound plan to backup and restore computer data on our own in case of a deletion, regardless of the cause. The day comes when the data archives are needed and they turn out to be unusable they don’t work or they are corrupted What a nightmare that situation would be! Although there are some chances that the archives might work if put into the hands of experienced professionals, it would cost more money to attempt to restore the data than it would be to have just outsourced the data backup, to begin with. Furthermore, data security extends into the realm of keeping computer criminals away and from hacking into computers there is more to computer security than just making sure data is efficiently backed up. Learning computer security takes years and there are some aspects of it that are continuously changing. In a sense, keeping up with computer security in some instances is like trying to hit a moving target while blindfolded attempting to protect computers from hackers in without the consultation of experienced professionals is a bad idea.

SystemsNet provides a wide array of services that remove the IT management burden from businesses. Please contact us for a consultation.

How Can The Right Managed Service Provider (MSP) Protect Your Business?

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Woman in office cubicle using a Managed Service Provider (MSP) for business protection

Having a team of support staff watching your back will prevent problems down the road.

The number of cyber security threats and attacks continues to rise. Last year, one ransomware attack impacted 150 countries. This ransomware attack impacted a variety of businesses, major companies, and hospitals and medical facilities. Over 100,000 computers were impacted before the problem could be addressed.

The recent attacks should highlight the major need for business and organizations across all industries to learn more about security issues. The attacks should also encourage business leaders and organization leaders to search for the assistance of IT and security experts to protect their data and prevent threats and cyber attacks.

These type of threats and attacks are constantly rising as hackers are becoming more advanced. Ransomware attacks involve a type of treacherous software that will block access to someone’s data until a certain amount of money is paid. Ransomware attacks are not uncommon because hackers are finding these attacks as ways to make a large sum of money from a small investment.

Your Business and Security

Businesses that do not have the proper equipment or the proper IT resources are some of the most vulnerable people in these attacks. Many businesses have outdated equipment and systems that leave the door wide open for ransomware attacks and threats. These workplaces generally lack the measures that will protect their system and equipment from the attacks.

Some businesses also have challenges when it comes to staff retention and lack of training. When there are constant staff turnover and a lack of experience or training, this can result in major errors that can result in falling for scams and not being aware of when a threat is actually taking place. Lack of experience can also result in leaders failing to use complex passwords or failing to update passwords.

Many businesses also lack the skills and experience of someone who is certified to create a security program for the organization. Times have certainly changed and hackers are becoming savvier than ever before, and some organizations are not prepared to deal with the savviness. When hackers see an easy opportunity to wreak havoc, they immediately see dollar signs because of the ability to access private and personal information.

If you continue to hold off on using the proper security and safety measures, you can find your business in a world of trouble. Thankfully, there are Managed Service Providers(MSPs) that have years worth of experience in cybersecurity and developing systems that will keep your data safe. Teaming up with experts will give you the peace of mind you need for your business.

Creating Passwords

Passwords can always present a security risk, especially when people use passwords that are not complex. We encourage you to use phrases or sayings that you can remember but will be difficult for someone else to guess. Your password should consist of at least 10 characters. It will take a longer time for a hacker to guess what your password is if it consists of longer characters.

Two-Factor Authentication

If you are looking for an extra level of authentication for your systems, you should consider two-factor authentication. Two-factor authentication will require any user to have more than one type of credential in order to gain access to a specific account. Two-factor authentication may add an extra step when it is time to log into a system, but it offers another layer of protection. This will make it harder for hackers to obtain access to your data.

You do not need to be an expert at security when it comes to protecting your business or organization, but it is important to have someone on your side who can provide you with the support you need. You will not have the protection you need by simply creating a program and hoping it works. You need to have the right security experts on your side to help protect your systems from the bold and savvy hackers.

Contact us today for more information on Managed Service Providers and the steps you can take to protect your business.