IT support has come a long way since that bored-sounding guy on the phone told you to switch it off then switch it back on again. And thank fudgecakes for that, because good IT is what stands between you and a Slough of Despond filled with the tears of your business.
But what does good IT support actually look like? To find out, we’ll take you on an exciting adventure into the crazy madcap world of IT support best practices. If you can recognize some of these in your current IT support, give yourself a self-affirming hug, because your business isn’t going to collapse anytime soon. If you can’t recognise any of them, run for safety, then give us a call.
Wait, Can We Please Define the Purpose of IT Support?
We were hoping you’d ask. IT support that keeps you out of trouble is only doing half the job. The purpose of IT support is actually twofold:
- Stop the bad stuff from happening–system outages, cyber-attacks, or landing in jail.
- Help the good stuff happen–build capability and capacity, support process improvement, improve productivity, and speed up onboarding.
IT Support Best Practices
IT support best practices achieve the yin/yang purpose of IT support, so let’s get on with it:
The Right Mindset
IT support is like yoga but without the mat rash. It’s a daily practice, firmly supported by a strong philosophy. Enlightened IT support has its own best-practice eightfold path that differentiates it from meh-flavored IT support, and it looks like this:
- IT support isn’t siloed. Yes, it navel-gazes to practice continual improvement, but it’s outward-facing and business-focused.
- It’s scalable, flexible, and structured to support business growth.
- It’s people-driven. It exists purely to make work better, funner, and more productive.
- It’s profit-friendly: IT looks for ways to save hard cash (e.g., with spares management) or save time (e.g., with zero-touch onboarding).
- It’s automation-positive. IT automates everything that can’t run away, because why would you not?
- It’s responsive. IT support answers the phone every time. It’s actually there to help. Hard to believe, but true.
- It’s proactive. Great IT support is a repository of expertise with a drive to make things better, unasked.
- It scans the horizon: best practice IT support works with IT and business strategy to help adapt your business to future challenges and opportunities.
Holisticness (We Believe This Is a Real Word)
Where there’s IT, there’s IT support. In terms of tasks, IT support covers the whole range of business tech. If your IT support person says, “That’s not my job” then, unless you’re asking them to do your laundry, it’s not IT support.
Good IT support is holistic and joined up. It covers tasks that support the full range of your business activities. You’re looking at stuff like:
- IT asset management
- Data security
- Process improvement
- Regulatory compliance
- Infrastructure management
- Device management and warehousing
- People support
- IT strategy
Serious Data Security
Good IT support takes data security seriously, with an end game to reduce or remove vulnerabilities, maintain uptime and data accessibility, and to keep you legal. It does this by designing and deploying a multi-level, multi-faceted data security strategy that is built on lots of mini IT support best practices. Here are some of our favorites:
Mobile Device Management
This momma of best practices has a whole heap of standardized risk-reducing loveliness baked in. With your fleet visible, corralled, and managed under a single pane of glass, you’re looking at mini IT support best practices such as encrypted files, role-based access, enforced passcodes, whitelisting websites, multi-factor authentication, app blocking, enforced updates, and Cloud single sign-on. And that’s just for starters.
Secure Offboarding
Offboarding is the sad, shivering, weird-looking rescue pup that no one adopts because the onboarding pup is happy, waggy, and pretty. Despite this metaphor not working at all, you know it’s true. Meh-level IT support forgets about offboarding securely because it’s too busy trying to attract new hires with its big, hairy, masculine onboarding process. Who cares about offboarding? Best practice IT support does. It’ll close SaaS accounts, de-provision, secure, clean, and wipe that spare device, because secure offboarding, like rescue pups, isn’t just for Christmas, but for life.
Device Warehousing
This is a rare yet vital chunk of IT support that completes the circle of device lifecycle management. Once you’ve offboarded securely, device warehousing is a best practice that keeps spare devices secure, safe, and warm until they’re needed again. This is a cost-saver as well as a security practice–and it keeps compliance people super happy. Triple whammy!
Grown Up Strategy
IT support gets all up in the proactive, strategic side of business through high-impact, big-picture best practices such as:
Disaster Recovery Planning
You’ll already be backing up your data (thank you, routine daily IT support!) but you’ll need something with extra spice to keep your business alive following nasties such as natural and political disasters. Best practice IT support will create realistic disaster recovery plans and put them into action should the worst occur.
Compliance Gap Remediation
Collecting acronyms such as SOC 2 or HIPAA will lure meatier contracts and shinier customers your way, but first, you’ll need to close those pesky gaps your compliance auditor whispered to you. Your IT support team will systematically fix those gaps and keep them fixed.
Self-Measurement
Yep, it’s a best practice that helps IT support understand what it does well and what it needs to improve.
There Are a Ton More IT Support Best Practices
If your IT support does all the above plus infrastructure optimization, ecosystem visibility, 24/7 monitoring, people training, and workflow improvement, then you’ve got yourself pretty good IT support. Well done, you. But if you’re getting the feeling that your IT support could be better, give us a call. We’ll spot the gaps.
Ignition is Silicon Valley’s best (and friendliest) IT security, compliance, and support team. Call us now–chatting about IT support and cybersecurity is our favorite thing to do!