How Is IT Complexity Straining Small and Midsized Businesses?

It’s important to choose an IT company that can help you keep up with an ever-evolving technical landscape. HRCT can take on your tech and let you concentrate on running the business.   Keeping your IT operations running is an essential part of modern business. Glitches happen,…

It’s important to choose an IT company that can help you keep up with an ever-evolving technical landscape. HRCT can take on your tech and let you concentrate on running the business.  

It Complexity

Keeping your IT operations running is an essential part of modern business. Glitches happen, but even the smallest amount of downtime has a downstream effect that can impact your bottom line. Reducing downtime, therefore, impacts productivity, customer satisfaction and business continuity.

According to a recent study by Wakefield, nearly half of all companies say it takes about three days to recover from IT issues. Interruptions now come from more sources than ever, including breaches, system slowdowns and failures, and changes that don’t perform as expected once rolled into production.

What Impact Do Breaches Have on Business?

Downtime creates logistical problems and can cause work to back up, but security breaches threaten the company’s reputation in a permanent way. Nearly 60% of respondents say they’ve experienced a security breach in the past year.

Companies need a secure way to store data and access it. The best way to do this is to team up with a great MSP that can provide enhanced security and safeguard your data.

Here are issues security officers say keep them up at night:

  • Security in the cloud
  • Computer malware and viruses
  • Internal data leaks
  • Hackers
  • Password vulnerability
  • Phishing attempts

These threats have vied for the top vulnerabilities faced by modern organizations. It’s important to understand the source of these increasing risk and how to fix them.

How Do Unskilled Resources Complicate the Situation?

Good technical personnel is hard to find. This is particularly true in a tight labor market. If you’re trying to keep an IT department fully staffed, you can’t always be as picky as you’d like about what you want in an ideal candidate. Here are the top labor challenges reported in the Wakefield survey:

  • Retaining IT staff
  • Recruiting and hiring IT staff
  • Difficulty focusing on strategic decisions

Over a third of SMBs (34%) feel they need better resources for emerging technology, including the cloud, mobile tech and cybersecurity. If you feel that your staff isn’t living up to the needs of the company, it may be time to bring in the experts. Hiring an IT company to fill the skills gaps can result in improvements across the board and gives you more time to think strategically about the direction of the company.

How Can You Stimulate Constant Innovation?

A lack of qualified candidates is a problem in specialized roles. Unfortunately, roles are becoming more and more specialized as applications and systems grow more complex. About half of the respondents say that a lack of the right skills prevents them from making big changes, like moving to the cloud. And businesses can’t fill the skills gap on their own.

Half of businesses say they conduct one-time awareness training but have no time to organize follow-up training on ever-changing cyber threats. Partnering with an MSP expands the pool of resources and lets your internal team concentrate on the big picture. HRCT can help you conduct a systems evaluation to determine areas of improvement.