The volume of tasks that need to be attended to by teams in small businesses could be overwhelming. From client interfacing tasks, to back-end operations, to accounting and sales reconciliation, small businesses in Sydney could get swamped with tasks on a day-to-day basis. And nothing could be worse than having laptops and desktop computers breakdown or not work accordingly just when they are needed the most.
There is no sense in dealing with these technical issues without a technical background as it will just be a waste of time. One of the smartest decisions a business owner can do is to have a go-to person when such problems on IT equipment pop up. The question is whether to have this person quickly accessible within the organization or have a contractor outside on-call. The small business owner can start with the following criteria to identify whether to have a permanent internal tech support or an on-demand external service provider.
Identify most common questions within the organization
The challenges faced by one person in the organization may or may not be common across the team. Because people in small organizations work on different tasks in their computers, the technical disruptions may come from different systems or areas within the equipment. It is in fact best to identify first if it is an equipment issue or if it is a lack of basic skills for the user. Sometimes, it is not having a sophisticated IT support that’s needed – perhaps investment on technical training, even the most basic system training for the end users is key to resolving day to day technical challenges.
In the next part of this blog, we’ll talk about costs and benefits of each option and how small businesses should consider this cost of having technical support as an investment instead of an expense.
