The question that every business owner asks:  Do I need an IT System Consultant/System Administrator?

Here are several indicators that your business may need to hire an IT Consultant/Administrator:

•   You start to wonder: Is my data safe? Most people save pictures and personal documents on their computers, online, or on backup drives, but is that enough for your business? As your company grows, you will need to save more and more information, and an IT consultant can help monitor where that information is saved, and make sure it won’t get lost.
  
• You or an employee spends more time in a day fighting computer problems than working. Computers break sometimes, hard drives fail, files get corrupted, and programs stop running. Some problems cascade into more problems. Without technical expertise and familiarity with these problems, your computer can get in your way more than it helps. Our IT consultants can not only solve these problems quickly, but can set you up with temporary fixes so you don’t suffer decreased productivity—preserving your company’s bottom line.
  
• You start sweating the small stuff. Do we get iPhones or Androids? Should we move our backups to the cloud? What’s the best program for my job? These are deceptively difficult questions, and there are many more like them. We help our clients turn them into simple decisions and feel confident in their choices.
• In a crisis, there’s no one who can get you back up and running. What would you do if your computer got a virus? What if there was a flood or hurricane in your area? How would you respond if someone hacked your email account? All of these can happen to you, and having an IT consultant familiar with your setup beforehand can save you a lot of time and money in the long run.
• There’s just too much tech to work through. Newer and faster technology is developed every day, and much of it can help your business. But with so many options out there, you may find it difficult to stay abreast to changes in the industry. An IT consultant can help monitor this new tech as it is created and show you only the best, most applicable things, while you do what you do best—run your business.

One of the major mistakes business owners make is putting too much on their plate—especially things for which they have no expertise. Having a well maintained IT department can help your business operate much more efficiently by making data quickly and easily accessible. The problem is, properly implementing and maintaining these systems requires advanced IT experience—something most business owners lack. Many business owners simply ignore the problem or try to self-manage their IT services because they do not have the funds to hire an IT staff. For small and growing businesses, this is an especially valid concern. The alternative solution is to hire an IT consultant to provide managed IT services. This comes at a fraction of the cost of a full-time IT staff, with several additional benefits.