How Your Small Business Can Be More Productive with IT

How Your Small Business Can Be More Productive with IT

That antivirus and antimalware app you use? Is it the best one for your business? Every software has features where one may be missing features you need while another has them. You may have a tech challenge for which there’s a solution that can save you time and not even realize it.

How Your Small Business Can Be More Productive with IT
IT keeps your motor running. Photo credit: Ford Thunderbird (license).

Every small business — including real estate agents, financial advisors, law offices and healthcare providers — can’t get by without technology. But are you getting the most out of the money you invest in IT? Do you have contingency plans in place in case something happens?

What you can do to maximize productivity and limit downtime as much as possible is bring on an IT consultant. A tech support pro who gets to know you and your business can find those solutions. These products and services could make a big difference in your business.

Data backup and recovery

Most small business owners know they must back up their data, but this can be the lowest priority on a long to-do list. As a result, they may not back up data as regularly as they should, if at all. Or they do backups, but have never tested their ability to recover their data. A rare few don’t back up at all because they live in an area where Mother Nature rarely intervenes.

Don’t wait until something happens to do something about it. A lot of weather incidences that were never thought possible have occurred in recent years. And besides most data lost isn’t the result of natural disasters, but because of server crashes, viruses or human error — situations that are far more common than most business owners realize.

How much downtime would you and your employees experience if data disappears or can’t be accessed? How much would it cost you if you were to lose your client database? With many data backup and recovery solutions on the market, it can be daunting for small businesses to determine what would work best. A trusted technical advisor can simplify it for you and explain why one solution would be great and another not ideal for your situation.

Managed services

Managed services providers (MSP) provide a suite of IT services for a flat fee on a monthly or annual basis. This allows your small business to set aside a budget and know exactly how much you spend on tech support. You won’t have to deal with unknowns and being charged unpredictable rates for different problems and solutions.

When you need tech support, you won’t have to search for someone every time something happens. And wonder if they’re someone you can trust. With an MSP on retainer, you’ll know who to call to solve your problem. An MSP usually provides you with one contact and that person’s job is to figure out who can help you.

Here are some of the services MSPs offer:

  • Proactive network monitoring and management.
  • Business continuity.
  • Data backup and recovery.
  • Disaster recovery planning.
  • Desktop support.
  • Exchange server.
  • Mobile device management and security.
  • Risk analysis.
  • IT security.
  • Patch management.
  • Server support.
  • Virtualization.

Some MSPs specialize in fields such as healthcare, law, finance and real estate. Your industry has its own rules and requirements as well as specialty software, such as HIPAA compliance, electronic medical records (EMR) and LexisNexis. Look for an MSP provider who knows your industry.

Website management

Are you using the efficient web hosting services for your website? How easy or hard is it to update the website? Does your website load quickly? Does updating the website take too long because the server responds slowly or times out? Countless web host providers offer plans for small businesses, but only a few will be right for your business.

An IT expert can review your website requirements to find the plan that fits that and your budget. Ask about web hosts and what makes one a better option than the other.

What do you use to update your website? Who would update the website? Your technical personnel? Non-tech? A contractor? Do you need training? Your IT consultant should ask these questions and help you work through them.

Some content management systems (CMS) — also referred to as web content management (WCM) systems — are geared toward employees in technical roles while others target people in non-technical roles. People think of tools like WordPress as for blogging use only. But such tools can work well for business websites. It depends on your needs. The IT consultant can help there too.

Third-party software

Is there a task that takes your team too long to accomplish or gives them a lot of trouble? Computer too slow? Ask about getting a tune-up. Check into having a backup done before starting any tune-up work. That way if it doesn’t go well, you have backup.

You may be surprised how many solutions there are to problems you encounter every day. A colleague talked to a friend in real estate. He said that he kept having to enter calendar appointments twice: once into Outlook PC and again on his phone. Same story with contacts. That’s a lot of wasted time considering real estate agents make a lot of appointments.

Many small businesses rely on Microsoft Outlook for email, appointments and contact information. But they’re also often on the go, especially realtors who would function better by having their data always with them. Most work around it by using Outlook on a laptop they carry with them. It would be more convenient to transfer Outlook calendar and contacts to a phone.

There’s an app for that. AkrutoSync is Windows PC software that can automatically sync phone with computer wirelessly while keeping your business critical information private. It knows how to sync Outlook calendar with iPhone, Windows Phone and Android devices. Not only does it sync Outlook calendar with phones, but it also transfers contacts, tasks and notes between computer and unlimited devices.

Unlike for big companies, it’s not cost effective for small businesses to buy an expensive Microsoft Exchange server and pay recurring fees to maintain it. They may not be aware of an Exchange server alternative like Akruto, which mimics one, so you get the benefit of an Exchange server without the cost and you can sync Outlook locally. The company has free 24/7 tech support. There’s no one better than the developer of the product who can help your business get up and running.

Your IT consultant can be helpful in finding solutions like this that will make a huge difference to productivity while saving on costs.

What other products and services help small businesses boost productivity and save money? Tell us in the comments.

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