Whether you are a new start-up in London, or elsewhere in the country, one of your key tasks will be organising the setup of your IT infrastructure and ongoing IT support.
The chances are that if you are starting up a new business, you, or one of your business colleagues, will be fairly proficient when it comes to using a computer and general IT issues. But it is highly likely that you would need help in setting up the complete IT infrastructure for your new office. Here are six ways computer support experts Them Digital can help start-ups and new offices get up and running with their IT systems quickly.
1. Your Job is to Focus on Your Business
There are a million and one things to think about if you are setting up the infrastructure for a new business operation from scratch. Cabling. Networking. Broadband. Wi-fi. Computer hardware. Phone systems. Firewalls. Anti-virus software. Production software. Security and passwords. Printers. File sharing capabilities. Backups. Data synchronisation. IP addresses. Email and messaging systems. Perhaps you may even need video conferencing to enable high quality meetings and presentations with international clients.
Even if you have the expertise to know what you need and set up all these things yourself, it all takes time – time which would probably be better spent winning new business, securing funding or working on your business strategy.
How you spend your time in the first few months as a start-up can have a huge impact on how successful the business becomes in the long term, so it's important to keep your focus on the core business, with as little distraction as possible from "housekeeping" issues, such as cleaning, accounting and IT.
By giving the task to a professional, experienced IT services company, you are likely to achieve a working setup much more quickly – which means getting your business off the ground more quickly too.
2. Understanding Your Setup
The best people to provide IT support for your small business are the people who set it up for you, because they will already be familiar with your hardware and software. Which is some CEOs feel tempted to set a system up themselves and why larger companies find it worth their while to employ permanent IT departments. But does it make sense for the person people call on to help with IT problems to be the CEO or Managing Director, just because it was them who set it all up?
Put simply it makes sense to get your new office setup arranged by someone who can also provide ongoing support into the future. So, when you need to call them to sort out a technical problem they can provide help more quickly.
3. The Right Hardware
Does your business need PCs or Macs or a combination? Do you need file servers? Does your workforce need mobile computing when they are out and about? If so, should these be laptops, tablets or smartphones?
Many start-ups grow their IT infrastructure organically, adding computers and other hardware to their setup in a piecemeal fashion, as they need it. While this is understandable, it can lead to problems down the line around inter-compatibility, as well as productivity issues, as people have to spend time transferring data between different systems, converting file types, etc.
Getting these hardware decisions right at the outset can help to prevent these problems and ensure that your staff aren't being held back by equipment that isn't best suited to their work. So it's advisable to choose a company who can advise you on your hardware needs as part of the overall setup, as well as providing technical support for that hardware in the future.
4. Efficiency Through Integration
Setting up one computer on a network is easy enough. But what about five? Or ten? And what if some are Windows PCs while others are Macintoshes?
This can be a particular problem for media production companies who want to use Macs for graphics, video and sound production, but PCs for everyday office applications. Having a "Mac only" policy could be more expensive than it needs to be, while having a "PC only" policy may prove restrictive to the creatives in your team.
However, it is perfectly possible to integrate Macs and PCs within an office to enable whatever level of communication and sharing you need (for example, sharing file servers and printers, email systems etc) provided you have the right expertise to set things up for you.
As well as the obvious advantages of integration (more efficient working and cooperation within your team), integration also means you can freely add Mac or PC hardware to your setup in the future based on your needs and budget, without being restricted to one or the other.
5. Future-Proofing
Even if your setup is "good enough" for now, it's always a good investment to be making choices which will still be working for you in 2 or 3 years time, or which have scope for expansion built in. After all, you may be a small business now, but if you are successful, you may not be so small in a few years time.
Having to replace basic infrastructure or switch systems because you have outgrown them can be painful and costly in terms of time lost to the business, so it makes sense to plan your IT in a way which minimises the number of times this might be necessary, and makes it quicker and easier to upgrade or expand in the future.
So it's important to get advice from an IT support company which has experience in dealing with the needs of a small business and how to create an IT setup which makes it easier for the business to grow, either in terms of headcount or computing capacity.
6. Affordable Expertise
When it comes to fixing IT problems, expertise equates to time saved. The more knowledgeable your IT support people are, the faster problems will be resolved and the faster your workforce can be up and running again. But keeping highly qualified experts on your payroll can be an expensive option. (And you almost certainly need more than one person, to cater for holidays, sickness, out of hours cover, and so on.) Employing someone with less experience will be cheaper, of course – but their inexperience could cost you time and money if they don’t have the expertise to fix problems quickly.
By opting for an external IT support arrangement you have access to the highest levels of expertise but at an affordable rate, and without the overheads of employing somebody, which will also involve management time, career progression, training, pensions and so on.
Business IT Support and Consultancy by Them Digital
At Them Digital we have been providing a full range of IT support services to small (and large) businesses in the Central and Greater London area since 2003. We have extensive experience of providing infrastructure for new offices and media/design studios, including the nitty gritty of installing Cat5e or Cat6e cabling, setting up networks, integrating Macs, PCs and other hardware, installing VOIP systems and more.
Once a setup is complete, we can provide ongoing IT support, either on an ad hoc basis as necessary, or on a contract basis, giving you priority over non-contract clients and clear, fixed costs. We offer three different types of contract allowing you to choose the right level for your business. |
