Every business owner has that moment when they realize the setup they have isn’t going to work anymore. The printer breaks down for the fourth time this month, someone opens a phishing email, and the entire network needs some serious intervention.
These moments pile up, and before long, the intuitive question no longer gets pushed aside: are we going to tough it out and make this work, or are we finally going to invest in IT support?
It often doesn’t seem so clear cut. Especially for a small company, whatever they can do to make things work without an investment is key, the office manager is “good at computers”, the owner’s nephew does a bit of freelance work on the side, doing nothing until it’s inoperable is the only course of action. But usually, there’s a tipping point where the stops and starts just become too costly.
When The Problems Start Compounding
Rarely do technology concerns present themselves as catastrophe immediately. They arrive in waves. Employees notice that their computers run a bit slow, but they don’t run slowly enough for anyone to replace them. People need password resets weekly because they forget which login belongs to which system. Someone on level 1 drops an important file, and although the backup system is “in place,” it’s technically up but not really up.
These are symptoms of something bad on the horizon, but more than annoyances. They equate to time employees cannot spend doing their actual jobs. If someone spends twenty minutes trying to connect to a shared drive or an hour on hold with a software vendor troubleshooting, that’s billable hours lost. For a company spending $30-50/hour per employee, those minutes add up quickly.
The biggest red flag is when these technology concerns impact business decisions. If a point-of-sale system goes down midday, if a website crashes during peak hours, if clients lose data visibility for even just a moment, that time means revenue lost, and credibility diminished.
When Things Stop Working as They Should
Many companies have someone on site who addresses tech needs and concerns as part of their role. This is fine when five people need minimal support, they can reset their passwords, order new equipment, and even make a call to the ISP when something goes awry. But this establishes complications as the company grows.
Complications arise in knowledge gaps. Someone who is “generally tech-savvy” is not a person who knows network security, cloud infrastructure and compliance requirements. Someone who knows how to troubleshoot an issue isn’t someone who can design a system that avoids the problem in the first place. For New York businesses desperate to maintain competitive advantages, this is when it makes sense to work with an it consultant new york city who can assess situation requirements and build solutions.
Complications also arise in time. When technology is someone’s secondary responsibility, it’s only addressed when there’s time between everything else, and that’s never as required and in-depth as it’s needed. Issues get compounded over time: a minor virus never gets fixed, updates are pushed back another week, the backup system no one tested in six months got ignored until it was too late, and shocker, didn’t work.
The Real Costs No One Talks About
Business owners naturally think about the costs of technology strictly based on what they’re paying for systems and services. But the greatest costs are often invisible, time not spent productively with unreliable systems, security of private data inadequately protected, and an opportunity cost that lacks supportive technology systems.
Consider what happens every time someone has technology problems at work. Someone can’t access a file, it takes them fifteen minutes to figure out what’s going on, ten minutes asking a coworker if they know how to fix it, and then they finally call whoever handles IT help only to find that person in a meeting. By the time this gets resolved, maybe two hours, no one has accomplished anything.
Now multiply that by 2-3 people per month, and multiply again by 10 employees, and suddenly you’re losing money hand over fist. Some reports suggest that small businesses lose upwards of $10,000/hour because of IT problems, if yours aren’t quite that high, it doesn’t matter; it’s cumulative.
Growth Changes Everything
Companies that started out fine under minimal IT policies often find themselves overwhelmed during times of growth. New employees mean new devices, new accounts, new security possibilities; a secondary location means multiple offices need connectivity; moving online means understanding access rights, compliance requirements and data migration.
Yet this is where companies get stuck, they’re successful enough that their IT needs have become overwhelming but they’re not big enough yet to justify bringing on someone full-time. The gap between what they need and what they have only widens.
Security Is No Longer Optional
Ten years ago, small businesses could fly under the radar as hackers sought to hit the biggest businesses with the most data/information. That trend no longer exists. Ransomware is hitting smaller businesses across industries; phishing emails look more legitimate than ever; data breaches happen because someone used their password on several sites.
The problem is that proper security takes constant monitoring, it’s not enough to install antivirus software and then forget it. Systems get neglected as software isn’t updated, employees aren’t trained properly and vulnerabilities lie stagnant until someone questions whether something suspicious pops up.
Business owners rarely have the time, and quite frankly, the expertise to get involved. They’ve got enough to worry about without playing amateur IT security evaluator.
Making the Call
When does it make sense to finally hire an IT service? More likely sooner than later; if technology problems take more than a few hours of someone’s time per month, if concern keeps them up at night regarding technology vulnerabilities and if growth plans are being sidelined because of technical constraints, or if fixed costs after problems arise come out to be more than proper resolution, then it’s time for third-party involvement.
Professional costs might seem high but compared to what costs already have been spent because of unreliable technology solutions, it’s foolish not to secure help sooner rather than later. Getting ahead of technology problems instead of constantly reacting to them manages how people work better with reliable systems and limits time wasted talking about tech instead of getting work done.
For most growing companies, it’s not about whether dedicated IT help makes sense; it should have already been put into place earlier. It’s about seeing beyond what else it costs by waiting too long to get involved in the first place.
