Technology maintenance and management is one of the major pain points of all businesses, but it comes more easily to large organizations that have large budgets. Unfortunately, small organizations are often left out, placing such an important aspect of managing their business on the back burner. How, then, can you take advantage of proactive IT maintenance without breaking your budget?

SMBs often have a lot of work on their plates due to having smaller workforces. Thus, something as important as IT gets put on hold in favor of the day to day responsibilities. The problem with that is if IT is not managed properly, it will result in downtime. One would think that adding a few heads to focus on technology management would be a solution, but adding salaries to your budget can be an expensive endeavor. Ultimately, there’s a better way.

Before you consider hiring technical staff, let’s have a conversation about managing your technology so you don’t need to put your focus on it. If you’ve been burned in the past by your regular computer repair person, we get it, which is why do things differently. Ordinarily, a business seeking computer support would suffer from what’s known as break-fix IT. This is a type of maintenance that your business seeks out when it’s suffering from broken technology.

When your technology doesn’t work properly, you will seek out assistance. The break-fix IT provider will then dispatch someone to resolve your problem. They will finish their work and you’ll pay any support fees that you’ve accrued (sometimes this includes travel time, an hourly budget, parts, service fees, etc.). This type of IT maintenance is more reactive than proactive, as it responds only when you are currently experiencing problems rather than preventing them in the first place.

At 415 IT, we pride ourselves on proactive IT maintenance. This type of managed service can remotely monitor and resolve most issues that your organization encounters before they evolve into bigger, more expensive problems. An example of this is actively monitoring your network for signs of hardware failure, then proceeding to assist you with replacing the problematic hardware before you deal with downtime. It’s just one way that your business benefits from proactive IT maintenance.

Thus, as long as it’s covered in your service level agreement, managed IT expenses will continue to be much easier to budget than the costs associated with break-fix technology maintenance. Outsourced IT services from 415 IT can be your first step toward optimizing your business’ operations and taking the strain of IT management off of your capital budget. To learn more, reach out to us at (415) 295-4898.