Do you need help & advice with AI & Automation or Cybersecurity?
What an IT support team does for your business
An IT support team keeps your computers and email working, sorts out problems when your staff get stuck, and keeps every machine up to date so problems happen less often. A good team also helps you spend sensibly on technology and get more out of the software you already pay for.
For most business owners, that day-to-day support is the only part of IT they ever see: things are either working or broken. Somebody also has to look ahead at cyber security, at AI and at what the business will need next.
day-to-day IT is not the same as governing and managing your IT.
Dave Lane, GoodChoice IT
The day-to-day: keeping the lights on
Most of what an IT support team does, whether they’re your own staff or an outside company, is keep things working. That covers the calls you’d expect: someone can’t sign in, email has stopped, a laptop won’t connect, a new starter needs a computer and accounts, a leaver’s accounts need closing.
It also covers the work you don’t see. Updates have to go on every computer, antivirus has to keep working and backups have to be checked. An IT company does most of this remotely: a small piece of software on each computer tells them when updates aren’t going on or the antivirus has stopped, so they can sort the problem before anyone notices.
Fixing things when they break, or stopping them breaking
There are two ways to buy IT support. The older way, known in the trade as break-fix, is to wait for something to stop working, ring your IT person, and pay them to fix the problem. In between, nothing much happens. Updates get missed and the antivirus stops working without anyone noticing. That’s where problems with ransomware start, where criminals lock up your files and demand money to give them back.
With managed IT support you pay a monthly fee and the IT company looks after your computers all the time. Things not breaking is in their interest as much as yours.
Dave’s rule of thumb: at about four or five people, start paying someone to stop things breaking.
When you first start a business you probably can’t afford that, and paying as you go is fine for the first few people. At about ten people there is a big step up in cost, because there is a lot more to manage across ten, twenty or fifty people’s computers.
Helping you get more from what you already pay for
A good support team gives advice as well as fixes. That might mean looking at how a job gets done in your business and finding a better way, or showing your team how to use software you’re already paying for.
It also means helping you spend the right amount on technology, neither overspending nor underspending. Expensive new tools are no use if the basics are being missed.
What day-to-day support usually leaves out
A lot of IT teams, in-house or outsourced, are focused on keeping the lights on. When Dave talks to business owners about their IT, a common answer is that they pick up the phone really quickly, but nobody talks to them about AI or cyber security.
Quick answers matter. But if nobody in your business is responsible for cyber security, the rules you have to meet and planning for AI, you’re missing an opportunity and putting the business at risk.
Keeping things working and keeping them secure can also pull a support team in different directions. A big company has separate teams for each. A small business may have one IT person, and when they’re stretched, the risk is that making things work wins over keeping them secure.
Dave suggests splitting IT into three budgets:
- everyday support;
- risk, meaning cyber security and the rules you have to meet;
- planning, including AI.
Then you can see which part isn’t being done and fix that part, without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Planning ahead is the job of a part-time IT director, who can work alongside your current IT company while they carry on with the support. Dave does this for businesses whose support is with another company. He won’t be both the IT director and the support company for the same business, because that is a conflict of interest.
Your own IT staff, an IT company, or both
You can employ your own IT staff, hand the whole job to an IT company, or mix the two. Your own staff get to know the business really well and build good relationships with your team. For firms of around 500 staff, Dave recommends a mix: junior staff in-house handle the everyday problems and the IT company handles the more technical work, so you aren’t paying an outside company every time someone has an email problem.
Handing all your technology to an IT company is fine, as long as you pick the right one. Dave’s view is that, like finance and sales, a business needs someone inside who understands its technology, ideally someone on the board who can advise. Without that, you lose the chance to use technology to move the business forward.
How to tell if your IT support is any good
You don’t need to be technical to spot an IT setup nobody is looking after. On a building site, rubbish and bits of plastic blowing about tell you the site isn’t being managed. In IT, a cabinet of tangled network cables, or company email that isn’t set up properly, tells you the same thing.
Our free SecureMyEmails checker gives your company email set-up a score out of 100 in about a minute, with simple next steps.
If you’re unhappy with your IT support, check what you’re measuring. Slow replies are a problem, and so is nobody planning ahead. Work out what you want from your technology before you change IT company, because changing is a big job.
Don’t be just changing your IT provider every 3 years for the sake of it. Find a team that you like and work with them long term.
Dave Lane, GoodChoice IT
Dave wrote a book on choosing an IT company: the free Small Business IT Buyer’s Guide covers what to look for and the questions to ask.
IT support from GoodChoice IT
GoodChoice IT is a small team based in the London Borough of Sutton, looking after businesses across Surrey and South London since 2006. Our team is here from 8am to 6pm, Monday to Friday, and our monitoring keeps watch over your computers around the clock.
We look after the day-to-day support and keep every computer up to date. We’ll also tell you plainly where you stand on cyber security and AI.
Questions about IT support teams
What hours does an IT support team work?
It depends on the contract. Our team is here from 8am to 6pm, Monday to Friday, excluding bank holidays, and our monitoring watches your systems around the clock. If something serious happens out of hours, call us and we’ll do everything we can. If your business needs people on hand around the clock, we can arrange that cover.
How quickly should an IT support team respond?
On our standard contract we aim to respond to a critical problem within an hour, and to most other problems within two to four hours. Ask any IT company what times they aim for, and how they show you whether they hit them.
Is IT support the same as cyber security?
No. Support keeps things working and cyber security keeps them safe, and a business needs both. They can come from the same company or from two. Either way, Dave’s advice is to have somebody check the work, because few people have the skills to do both well.
Should a small business have its own IT person?
Doing everything in-house is expensive, and one person who only sees your own systems can’t know how technology is performing across the industry. Businesses also go wrong the other way, handing everything to one firm that can’t deliver all of it. A mix often works: an IT company for the support, and someone looking after planning.
