IT Support Fort Worth & Dallas
Your business runs on your IT infrastructure — something that the vast majority of your employees may not even realize exists until it breaks. Having adequate staff levels to support your technology platforms could mean a significant investment in additional full-time staff members as well as the ongoing training needed to maintain preparedness for new threats and new opportunities in the marketplace. Without this critical engagement from your technology team, your users are often losing hours of productivity to small challenges such as misplaced files and folders, lack of access to core systems and expired software credentials. With IT support Fort Worth businesses can rely on, you can feel confident that your business professionals can access the tools and information that they need to be successful.
What Are IT Managed Services?
It’s important to understand the scope of IT managed services when you’re looking for a trusted partner. This term can mean a lot of different things in the business world, but here are a few of the services that are generally offered:
- Help Desk support
- Onsite technology troubleshooting
- Microsoft Office 365 Suite access or onboarding
- Remote system monitoring
- Advanced security systems and expertise
- Hardware and software acquisition or installation
- Email encryption and filtering
- Compliance support
- Technology project ramp-ups or sunsetting
- IT vendor management
- Network design consulting and implementation
- Data security and encryption
- Mobile device management (MDM)
- VoIP Phone systems
- Network traffic monitoring
- Cloud and hybrid cloud support
- Backup and disaster recovery services (BDR)
These services and more help your business and technology professionals stay focused on the core competencies of the business — leaving much of the infrastructure and heavy lifting to their managed services provider.
Maintaining the Secure IT Support Fort Worth Businesses Need
Cybersecurity is a hot topic everywhere from technology team break rooms to the boardroom as worldwide cybersecurity spending is set to top $96 billion by the end of 2018. Organizations of all sizes are scrambling to create a secure infrastructure that protects data in transit as well as at rest. New threats appear on a daily basis, making it extremely difficult for in-house technology teams to put enough emphasis on maintaining high alert levels while still running the day-to-day business operations. Mobile devices are fast becoming one of the cyber terrorists favorite weapons of mass destruction, as BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) enters the mainstream business world.
Protecting Your Business from External Threats
Your business data is under attack in a variety of dimensions: from IoT devices in the medical industry to financial transactions that are being processed under less-than-secure conditions. Careless employees who do not fully understand the extent of their negligence are most often to blame for endpoint breaches, with 81% of organizations finding employees to be the weak point in their security. Active mobile device management (MDM) provides an added layer of protection against the unthinking actions of well-meaning individuals. Security assessments are often the first step in determining whether or not your business is adequately protected from threats. A full security assessment may contain a high-level report, action items, user security issues that need to be addressed, outbound security information and a report that details your external vulnerabilities. Understanding any security hurdles is the first step in protecting your essential business data and information assets — next, you’ll need to begin remediation of any problems that were found.
Creating Competitive Advantage for Your Business
Your IT and help desk professionals are likely spending a significant amount of their time resetting passwords, finding missing files and performing standard maintenance. These activities can dramatically reduce the amount of time they have available for adding unique value to your business. Offloading some portion of these daily issues allows these individuals to partner with business teams to create the brain trust that your organization needs to move forward and gain an edge over the competition. Remote help desk offerings from IT managed services providers have improved dramatically over the past 5-10 years, with up to 80% of all support requests able to be handled remotely within 60 seconds or less. This level of on-demand support generally exceeds what your organization could provide internally, even with the additional help desk staff.
IT Support Fort Worth Businesses Can Trust
Finding a trustworthy partner in business can take time, effort and commitment — for both parties. This is especially true when you are considering a longer-term contract, such as finding IT support Fort Worth businesses can rely on. When your business partner is fully invested in your success, they are continually looking for opportunities for you to save money, become more efficient and create a competitive advantage for your business. That only happens when both organizations are engaged and there is an open flow of communication and trust. Managed services providers often work with a wide range of different organizations, allowing them to gain efficiencies of scale for their platforms and provide shared knowledge that benefits all partners.
Improving Software ROI
Implementing core software platforms or making a change between systems each offer unique challenges to an organization. Everything from the way data connects your various systems to ensure that employees only have the level of access that they need takes time and can add to the frustration level of teams who want to see quick business value. With external assistance in the form of project management or other outsourced IT support, you can often reduce the amount of time required to ramp up a new software package while improving the adoption rate and usability of the platform at the same time. A high-quality managed services provider has the tools and know-how to help smooth the road of onboarding these new platforms — and may even bring experience in the particular platform you are adopting.
Creating a holistic view of your organization’s IT infrastructure is often the first step in your journey with a managed services provider. Once you’ve defined any security vulnerabilities, business challenges and upcoming projects you will have a solid basis for conversation about the ongoing needs of your organization. From 60-second help desk responses to advanced backup and disaster recovery offerings, a managed services provider is your ready partner in protecting your sensitive information assets and boosting productivity in your business.
