When I was planning this article I was hoping to produce a lengthy, well-padded-out and super-informative read. However, the more I thought about it, the more-and-more simple it became. I realised that the core challenges that business face when it comes to Business IT Support are really just two-fold; ‘Constraints’ and ‘Complexities’.

Small and medium businesses in Glasgow tend to not have their own IT departments. You know, we’re not all the size of JP Morgan, are we? A typical IT department in a larger organisation can consist of a lot of different personnel and job roles such as IT Managers, Service Desk Analysts, Network Engineers and Cyber Security Specialists. As you’ll probably know, these types of staff members usually have a fairly hefty wage bill associated with them and that just simply isn’t affordable to a lot of small and medium business in Glasgow. Finance resources tend to be driven more into marketing or skills development of current staff to drive the business forward.

This means that small and medium businesses in Glasgow have to provide their own internal Business IT Support, usually provided by managers or staff members that have some sort of technical knowledge. As I’ve seen on lots of occasions, Managers or other staff members, who have important roles within the business, are being drawn away from their work in order to go and problem solve IT problems.

It’s really easy to detail the impact the business when this is happening. If this staff member is one of those hard-hitting members of the sales team brining in hundreds of thousands in revenue each year then they could potentially be missing out on critical interactions with their pipeline. Their manager who is standing over them, trying to figure out why their Outlook calendar isn’t syncing properly, is being paid a fortune, as well. The same goes for colleagues trying to help other colleagues – it is a massive distraction and can sometimes take them both absolutely ages to figure things out. This leads me to my next point on the constraints side; ‘complexities’.

If you’re reading this then it’s highly likely you’ve been in one of the following situations: standing in the boardroom frantically trying to figure out how the new whiteboard works before your clients arrive in 36 seconds, sat at your desk tearing your hair out because you can’t get your headset to connect, forgetting your password for the CRM and not being able to reset it yourself. These situations are all pretty infuriating and are usually a result of the staff member just not having the right technical knowledge to be able to solve the problem.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this. Technology advances and changes so quickly and it’s really difficult to keep up with new ways of having to do things like trying to make two bits of kit work together when you have no idea what you’re doing and no previous experience in doing it. It’s quite funny but the most difficult part of our calls with new customers is trying to get them to download our remote access tool so we can remote in and solve the issue they are facing. But once we’ve guided them through installing that and we have access, it’s quick and smooth sailing. Usually we would partner with a new business and go to site install the tool ourselves but, a lot of the time, we get calls from brand new clients who are in a situation and need help there and then.

I’ve digressed slightly here but the point I would like to make is that the hardware and solutions you will be using within your business can be very complex and quite intricate, especially to members of staff that aren’t as ‘tech savvy’ as others.

Both resource and complexity constraints are detrimental to the business. Most staff do not have the technical knowledge to be able to deal with IT problems and the ones that might have a better chance should be focusing on their work and not helping others. The good thing is, this can all be alleviated by using a good Business IT Support partner based in Glasgow – like us!

I can’t break the benefits of getting business IT support in Glasgow down into just two topics. In my opinion there are five: time and resources, learning and utilisation, security, ideas and return on investment. I’ll break these down for you though.

The staff that were previously messing around with ethernet cables and trying to figure out why their desk phone isn’t ringing are now just…doing their job. They have been able to call the NovaBytes IT helpdesk and the team at NovaBytes have resolved their issue quickly and effectively. That staff member hasn’t had to call over a manager and distract them from a job they were supposed to be doing and the company has not wasted an hours worth of wages on two members of staff.

Whilst this member of staff was on the phone to the IT helpdesk at NovaBytes, they have also learned how to avoid the problem moving forward and have potentially been given a little bit of information about how to better utilise the solution they have phoned in about.

A common phrase you will hear in our office when on a phone to a service desk customer is “did you know you could also do this?” If I were to think of a quick example I have heard recently, it was when one of our engineers had taken a call from our customer Glasgow Property Letting who needed a password reset on their VoIP app. Our engineer quickly showed the member of staff how to use their password manager to generate a secure password and how to recall that password the next time they went to log in. This member of staff is now much less likely to experience an issue in forgetting their password again.

NovaBytes are well known for specialising in Cyber Security and for protecting hundreds of businesses in Glasgow and the rest of the UK. Partnering with us for you business IT support requirement means you get the Cyber Security skills and knowledge, as well. We can provide awareness training for your staff so they know how to spot a phishing email or a scam, we can provide the technology to protect your business and also the policies that need to be in place to ensure you know exactly what you are doing in the event of a ransomware attack.

Having regular catch-ups with managers and directors in your business provides us with valuable insights into business processes and how they could potentially be improved with technology. We are (and I know I am bias) the absolute masters of coming to our clients with the right solutions and the right technology that will help streamline a business process or help solve a problem the business has been facing. We offer a set few solutions and services but we are also great friends with lots of peers in the IT industry like Russell Lawrie, the CEO of Robotics AI who provides his customers with process automation that saves both time and resources.

This is the main reason that most companies are doing what they are doing; the money. We find it incredibly easy to prove an ROI when it comes to our IT support services. They are very cost effective and, ten-times-out-of-ten, always cost less than what they are paying their staff to try and figure out how to solve their own IT problems by themselves.

So I’ve talked a lot about the core challenges I’ve found when it comes to business IT support in Glasgow over the past couple of years and I’ve mainly found that they can be broken down into two types of challenges; resource constraints and complexities. The good thing I think I have highlighted is that if you hire a business IT support partner in Glasgow like NovaBytes, you will get a good return on investment as your staff wont be wasting precious time trying to troubleshoot IT problems, they will most likely learn a lot from us and better utilise the solutions that you are paying for, your security will be positively impacted and we will also come to you with new and innovative ideas that will help your business in one way or another.

If this article resonated with you and you think you could use our Business IT Support services then please get in touch