Do you need IT support? Good question. The short answer is, “Is a frog’s butt watertight?” The long answer is, “Probably, definitely, but it depends. But, probably, yes.”
By IT support, we mean the outsourced kind. Like when you pay a gardener to clean up your yard rather than do it yourself. Except your outsourced IT team won’t plant geraniums and your gardener won’t save you from data breaches and national headlines.
Why not take this short-and-not-at-all-validated quiz called “Do I Need IT Support?” to find out if your business needs IT support? It’ll take just a few minutes of your life, and by the end of it, we hope you’ll either be terrified or inspired enough to give us a call. Because all quizzes are just sales tools wrapped in self-absorption and you know it. And that’s why they’re fun and exciting.
Fun and Exciting Quiz: Do I Need IT Support?
Rules:
- Do the quiz.
- Award yourself 27 points for a yes, minus 10 points for a no.
- Winner gets a chat with our Great Leader, Noam. And so does everyone else.
Question 1: Is Your Tech Breaking More Than Usual?
Think back to the last time you screamed like a goat. We’ll bet it was because of a sloooooow-loading computer. Or the internet checking out for no reason. Or dropped calls on your telesales desk. Or Zoom conferences turning into mime shows. Tech problems mean a constant flurry of firefighting and frustration.
Loss of temper, loss of time, loss of productivity–you can lose a whole lot of things with unreliable tech. That’s because your IT ecosystem–the hardware, software, and stuff that makes it talk to each other–needs monitoring and maintenance. It’s not a set-it-and-forget-it operation. For utmost effectiveness, you’ll need IT that works 24/7.
With managed IT support, it does become a set-it-and-forget-it operation. For you, anyhow. That’s because your outsourced IT team will do two magical things:
Cleaning and Optimization
A decent IT support team will review and optimize your IT ecosystem. Cleaning and optimization transform your IT from reactive and problem-driven to proactive and agile. That means streamlining your processes and data management, making your systems more interoperable, and eliminating danger zones. It might even mean de-spaghettifying that shameful network cabling cupboard.
Monitoring and Maintenance
Once your IT ecosystem is optimized, it’s time to keep it that way. Your pet IT support team will have visibility across all layers of your tech stack, keeping watch for anything that compromises its health and security. They’ll introduce an innovative monitoring platform that measures system performance, availability, and resource utilization, and troubleshoot anything iffy before it escalates to an outage.
Reliable, functional IT that’s less vulnerable to crashes and attacks is so on-trend right now.
Question 2: Has Your Data Been Breached? Even a Little Bit?
If your data’s been breached, you’ll already have hired expert IT support because nothing says, “My business is sloppy/useless/non-credible/untrustworthy” more than your clients’ personal data being published on the dark web. Even if you haven’t been breached (as far as you know), it’s time to get serious about data security, because no one wants to be tomorrow’s headline.
Where do you even start? Simple! Any outsourced IT team worth its muffins will get your data security tight. There are many ways to shave a pony, and it’s the same with IT security. Your IT support team will bake and serve up tasty data-security delicacies such as:
- Anti-ransomware tools
- Data loss prevention strategies
- DNS filtering
- Threat sandboxing (not as much fun as it sounds)
- Cloud single sign-on and access control
- Phishing simulations
- Content filtering and reporting
But it’s not all defensive, negative stuff. If you’re an ambitious business that wants to play with the big contracts, you’ll need to demonstrate that their data is safe with you. This means you’ll tapdance barefoot through the itching powder of compliance regulations like HIPAA or SOC 2. However, this is a good thing because proof of information security compliance is a whopping business asset. But achieving it is a specialized task. IT support folk will help you achieve compliance by:
- Mapping your information security management system to regulatory standards to see what you’re already doing well. P.S. Our IT support lets you check off 28 SOC 2 controls with little effort. Just saying.
- Mending the data security holes flagged up by your compliance auditor.
- Keeping everything compliant once it’s to standard.
Question 3: Does Your Team Work Remotely?
We’ve not often gotten this far down in a blog without mentioning mobile device management (MDM), so something’s off today. MDM wrangles your entire cross-platform device fleet into a literal IT asset register that you (or your IT support) can secure and manage from a single dashboard. But if you’re managing a remote team without MDM, you’re at bigger risk of:
Spending Money on New Devices
Without MDM, lost devices stay lost. With MDM, you’ll be able to track them down. No need to cough up for new devices, licenses, and all the joy that comes with it. And, while they’re AWOL, you can lock down those devices and wipe the data to stay secure. You’ll also be able to re-use spare devices, too, because you’ll actually know where they are. Some magical outsourced IT support teams (i.e., us) offer device warehousing so you don’t even need real estate to house the extras.
Data Breach
This again. Without MDM, remote working is a big fat attack vector waiting to happen for too many reasons: unauthorized applications, out-of-date OS, poor password management, and unsafe home networks for starters. But if you have an IT support team managing your MDM for you, these aren’t a thing anymore.
Question 4: Are You Hiring?
Ah, the sweet, sweet smell of onboarding automation. If you’re scaling up, you’ll need to onboard a ton of people and do it well so they don’t run screaming on their first day. And, if you’re busy scaling up, do you have the time or knowledge to force your part-time IT person to provision, package, and send out a dozen new devices–let alone collect them if your new people turn out to be disappointing?
IT support gives you access to a range of expertise that you might not have in-house, and this includes creating, automating, and managing an onboarding (and offboarding) workflow that gets your new people on the task in about twenty minutes. You’ll also be able to offer your new people their choice of device because good IT support loves cross-platform working. If you’re hiring, you need IT support.
Everyone Benefits From a Little IT Support
Do you need IT support? Add up your scores then divide by the number you first thought of. Whatever number you come up with, you need IT support. Probably outsourced IT support (like us) because it comes with an on-call bank of IT expertise, a helpdesk that actually answers the phone, someone clever to talk IT strategy with, flexible pricing you can actually understand, and a ton of other delicacies.
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!