The Top 5 Reasons to Hire an IT Professional

Should You Hire an IT Professional?

As a business owner or manager, you can’t do it all…but sometimes you feel like you have to. Budgets need to stretch after all.

However, your time is valuable too so hiring out for specialists in certain areas is important. Some choices are obvious. You wouldn’t try to fill your own cavity. But then there are places where we think we can let hiring a professional slide. Is hiring an IT professional one of those areas for you?

I hope not.

Having a professional IT company partner with your company can be an invaluable resource, particularly when hired as part of a monthly maintenance package.

If you’re on the fence about whether it’s wise to put an IT professional into your company, here are my top 5 reasons to do so.

IT Professionals Keep an Eye on Your Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity is complex, vast and every changing. If you don’t have someone specializing in it, it’s easy to miss something. If you don’t have anyone scheduling time to think about it, you’re likely to miss a lot.

What will that oversight mean for your company?

It can be anything from an inconvenience to a catastrophic loss. The average cost of a cybersecurity breach for a small business is 36,000 to 50,000 dollars.

When you have an IT service company working with you, they will be keeping an eye on your security situation. An IT professional will remind you when it’s time to change codes and passwords. Now if you don’t listen, well… that’s still on you. 🙂

Clearing Computer Clutter

In our offices and homes, we have a tendency to collect clutter. Despite the best of intentions, we may find a coupon or receipt from decades ago that we didn’t realize was still around. Why did we initially save it? Was it even on purpose? Only a tired shrug emoji can express our feelings.

Our electronic equipment is no different. Most modern phones will tell us to clean out junk files. Our computers can be a little more complex.

Every time we open a new app, temporary files are created. Sometimes they stick around. Similarly, cookies and cache fill up space as we search the web each day.

Computer starting to run a little slow? Those are just some of the reasons why.

But for many of us who are less tech-savvy deleting files is an exercise in terror or at least confusion. Where do I find the files to remove and how do I know I’m not deleting something important?

An IT professional can handle it all for you and when you sign up for a managed IT contract it’s all part of the package!

Equipment Advice

No equipment lasts forever.

Even when you take great care of your technology, it can become outdated and need to be replaced. But it’s easy to have an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” attitude. Why spend money on something you already have?

Sometimes there are good reasons to replace equipment that is still working. When new technology is released, it can come with features that will save you so much time and money, that not buying it is a poor business decision.

Conversely, there’s plenty of flashy features that while fun may not be worth a budgetary expense.

How do you tell the difference between a “nice to have” and a “can’t miss” feature?

A good IT company without an agenda can give you the advice you need to decide whether it’s time to make a purchase or it’s better to stick with what you’ve got.

1 Phone Call

There are extra consequences to having too many cooks in the kitchen when it comes to your tech.

Besides the usual “spoiling of soup” there can also be a lot of finger-pointing.

When you have one IT professional company that handles your IT needs, you have 1 phone call to make. Even if that company is not the source of the problem, it’s the job of the IT professional within the company to find the source and fix the problem.

How much time can that save you? And perhaps even more importantly, how much aggravation?

Cost

And the number 1 reason to have an IT company on your team? It will save you money!

For most small businesses, saving money is a top priority. Business can be unpredictable. In early 2019, no one saw 2020 coming. And we all had to adjust. Some people lost their businesses. Others had to make difficult decisions to keep them.

Of course, not all surprises are as large as worldwide catastrophes. Some are as simple as a equipment failure.

When you have an IT contract, you can change a surprise major expense into a planned monthly bill.

Your IT provider will watch out for potential problems and when one comes up, be there to fix it. Instead of paying for a surprise 8 hours of labor, your cost is already covered.

How valuable is that?

 

Obviously, there are nearly infinite reasons to hire an IT company. Many are sub-reasons within the categories I described. Hopefully, this blog got you thinking along the right track for why it could be valuable to you and your small business.