If you were to survey small business owners and ask them what their five greatest challenges were, chances are more than one would mention computer and network maintenance. Companies that are big enough to have a full-time IT specialist on staff might not, but IT issues are a major challenge for those who aren\u2019t.<\/p>\n
You know how far behind you can get when the network is down. And it doesn\u2019t have to be absolutely inoperable to create work interruptions. So how do you keep that from happening \u2013 and deal with it when it does?<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, you don\u2019t have a lot of options. Unless you\u2019re lucky enough to have an employee who knows enough to keep the network running, someone with both training and experience, there are really only two viable ones.<\/p>\n
Managed or On-Demand IT<\/strong><\/p>\n Some businesses that can\u2019t afford an IT staff position simply hope for the best. And they pay for it when the worst occurs.<\/p>\n \u201cManaged IT\u201d is a generic term for a professional field that offers a wide array of services, depending on what you need and who you hire. It\u2019s a kind of outsourcing. You sign a contract with an IT firm, and they monitor your network, sending alerts when there are potential problems and working with critical needs like backups, patches, and security.<\/p>\n If you absolutely can\u2019t afford managed IT and you\u2019re not located in a very rural location, you can probably find firms that provide on-demand services. These individuals and teams can do both preventive maintenance and damage control on an a la carte basis.<\/p>\n Defining Your Situation<\/strong><\/p>\n If you\u2019re just starting a business or you\u2019re taking on a more complex network of computing devices, there are things you should consider before doing a localized Google search or getting recommendations, like:<\/p>\n IT management is an ongoing, ever-changing process. Network maintenance may cost more than you want to pay, but consider the expense of work shutdowns, lost or stolen data, and antiquated, patched-together, error-prone systems that can\u2019t keep up when you calculate the cost of this critical business necessity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you were to survey small business owners and ask them what their five greatest challenges were, chances are more\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1457,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-small-business-services"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n