IT is a crucial business asset. Digital business systems help speed up and streamline enterprise operations while minimizing costs and errors. However, setting up, running, and utilizing an IT infrastructure is no easy feat. Mistakes or oversights in an IT system can develop into troublesome technical pain points that could devastate the entire company.
Let's look at five of the most common business IT pain points, their causes, and how to address them:
Frequent downtime
IT outages are quite a common phenomenon in the business world. And a costly one, too. Just a few minutes of unexpected downtime are enough to cause unimaginable losses to companies heavily reliant on digital operations. Uptime Institute reported six downtime incidents in 2021 that each led to losses of over $25 million. It's difficult to determine the average cost of IT downtime because it largely depends on the business and the affected processes. For instance, analysts estimate that a recent Facebook downtime may have cost the company about $60 million in revenue in just 6 hours.
The usual culprits for IT downtime are:
- On-site power loss
- Hardware and software failure
- Network issues
- Cyberattack
- Human error
- Poor IT management
- Natural disasters and accidents
Rising IT budget
Establishing and running an enterprise-scale IT infrastructure is not cheap. Companies spend as much as 8 percent of their annual revenue on business tech. Yet, that may not even be enough. According to the 2022 State of IT report, 53 percent of businesses in North America and Europe expect their IT budgets to increase. There are many factors that may cause your IT spending to rise in today's business climate, including:
- Prioritizing IT projects
- Upgrading legacy systems
- Hiring more IT support workers
- Supporting remote and hybrid work
- The rising cost of IT equipment and software
Cyber insecurity
Cybercrime is becoming more sophisticated and rampant. Threat actors continue to deploy more ingenious tactics to compromise protected corporate data and other digital assets. Several reports point to an alarming cybersecurity landscape riddled with severely devastating threats, such as ransomware, supply chain attacks, DDoS, IoT attacks, data theft, and social engineering scams. What's more, businesses are under a lot of pressure from government and industry bodies to comply with stringent data security and privacy regulations.
In short, cybersecurity is a higher priority in the business community than ever before. However, keeping corporate digital assets, employees, and customers safe from these threats is proving difficult.
Data loss and exfiltration
Data is a valuable enterprise asset used to inform critical business decisions, enhance the customer experience, and measure business performance. Unfortunately, cybercriminals understand data's value and often target data centres, cloud systems, and networks to steal it. Organizations can also lose data to human error, insider sabotage, natural disasters, and systems failure.
Data loss and exfiltration can cripple a business in many ways. In addition to losing the lifeblood of business intelligence, a data loss/exfiltration incident can also subject your business to legal action, not to mention the loss of trust among customers.
Delays in fixing technical issues
How fast does your IT team fix technical issues when they arise? Delays in resolving system bugs, errors, and crashes can cost your company valuable time and revenue due to downtime. Slow IT response is often a result of poor IT staffing, needlessly complicated technical procedures, or an overwhelmed IT support staff. Also, waiting until something breaks to fix it can cause costly delays and repairs.
Relieve IT pain points with Highway 99 Technology Solutions
Pain is a great motivator for action. And the best action you can take to mitigate all these IT challenges is to partner with a managed IT services provider. A managed IT provider gives you access to proactive IT support, which minimizes the risk of unexpected crashes and prevents downtime. Managed IT also augments your IT staff with a team of highly trained and vastly experienced tech professionals. With the extra hands and expertise, you'll never have to worry about security compliance or IT staffing.
And the good news doesn't end there. Despite all these benefits, working with a managed IT provider costs just a fraction of running an in-house IT department. So, it's a great way to cut IT overheads, too.
Leverage the power of managed services with Highway 99. In addition to managed IT, we also offer data backup and disaster recovery services to prevent data loss and support for special projects such as networking and solutions deployment. Book a zero-obligation IT assessment today and start your journey to IT freedom.
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