Proactive IT support will optimise business performance and fuel growth, helping you to outperform competitors and enhance your customer experience.
Reactive vs proactive IT support
Are your computers running slowly? Do you experience regular, reoccurring system errors? Or do you find that IT issues are regularly stopping you and your team from working efficiently? If this sounds all too familiar, you probably have a reactive IT support provider.
Reactive IT support, or a ‘break-fix approach’, refers to IT providers who will only react to damage once it’s already happened. This means more issues tend to occur and can take longer to fix, which will hinder the productivity of your business.
To maximise productivity and minimise downtime, you need a proactive IT support partner. At Air IT, we pride ourselves on offering proactive, long-term technological solutions that add genuine value to our clients.
Proactive IT support consists of two main areas of expertise: effective monitoring of systems and strategic technology consulting.
Firstly, proactive IT will prevent issues from occurring in the first place by consistently monitoring your systems, servers, and networks to identify and solve potential issues before they’ve even occurred. This will reduce the amount of time spent rectifying IT issues and give your team more time to work on important tasks.
Moreover, a proactive IT support provider will be truly invested in helping you succeed, providing you with insightful, bespoke technology consulting. At Air IT, we take the time to learn about your business and its goals. As such, we can draw up a cohesive IT roadmap that outlines all goals, budgets and timeframes related to your IT strategy. This is then reviewed regularly and adapted to the current needs of your business to ensure that the service we deliver is tailored specifically to what you need.
The importance of reliable and proactive IT
To ensure that your systems operate effectively, your staff can work productively, and your customers receive the best service possible, it’s crucial that you have reliable, effective 24/7 IT support to solve day-to-day issues, as well as proactive technology consulting services.
How you can benefit from proactive IT support:
- Your systems, networks, apps, and devices will be consistently monitored and maintained, meaning potential issues are identified and fixed before they develop and cause your business problems
- Because fewer IT issues occur, your business will experience less costly downtime, which could otherwise result in a loss of reputation and revenue
- 24/7 monitoring also means that your IT infrastructure will always be up to date, enhancing cyber security
- Reliable, effective 24/7 IT support means that if IT issues do occur, experienced engineers will provide long-term solutions to minimise the chance of reoccurring problems
- Proactive IT support providers will learn about your business, making tailored suggestions for technological improvement and investment. This will mean you have the very best technical expertise on hand to help you streamline processes, outperform competitors, boost efficiency, and optimise overall customer experience
- You will receive regular technology consulting so that your IT roadmap is up to date in line with industry trends, new technology, and the needs of your business
- Proactive monitoring allows your company to sidestep potential crisis situations that would severely impact productivity and, potentially, the financial performance of the company
- If a crisis does occur, proactive IT support partners will ensure that the right backup and disaster recovery measures are in place to reduce disruption and productivity loss, helping to get you operating as normal as quickly as possible
Prevention is better than a cure
Managing the health of your IT systems in a purely reactive way is the same as managing your own physical health reactively. Going for a check-up is proactive management of your health. You will discover signs of any potentially serious health problems – such as high blood pressure or cholesterol – and actions can be taken to reduce the risk of these complications developing into a critical illness.
Like health issues, many IT problems can be identified by early warning signs that would be picked up through proactive monitoring. An unmonitored server’s event logs would show any potential issues. Unmonitored backup systems may also show a high number of failed backups. It is imperative that someone notices these through proactive monitoring otherwise your most recent backup could be well out of date when you actually need to use it! Other potential issues are antivirus systems that haven’t been updated for months – or a hard drive that has completely failed with no one any the wiser.
Tailored IT support and technology consulting
To provide the best support, your IT partner needs to understand the goals, challenges and industry demands of your business. As a proactive IT Support provider, we can devise a strategic IT roadmap for you that has your business goals at heart. We’ll also provide a technology audit of your current IT infrastructure, along with recommendations for improvements and predictions for ROI and other relevant outcomes.
Proactive IT Support isn’t just about ensuring updates are installed and fixes are applied. A truly proactive IT Support partner will anticipate the needs of your business and make recommendations to ensure your processes are streamlined and your technology solutions are tailored to your specific requirements.
As a proactive IT support company, we will:
- Carry out proactive monitoring and vital maintenance routinely in the background, including monitoring all server event logs, ensuring correct antivirus updates and activity, monitoring backup status, firewall activity and hack/spam relay attempts, system bottlenecks and processes, processor and RAM utilisation, application services (Exchange, ISA, IIS etc.)
- By making sure everything is up to date, you won’t be affected by downtime, pop-ups and reminders
- Keep you informed about proactive actions by providing visual and interactive reports, enabling you to drill down into the detail to see the value of a fully managed IT support solution
- Report on device health, so you’re clear on how devices are performing and can make decisions about when to replace them
- Take the time to learn about your business, industry, goals, and challenges so that we can make accurate recommendations for technology that will solve problems and boost performance
- Provide regular technology consulting services, drawing up a three-year IT roadmap that outlines the goals, budgets, ROI, and timeframes for your IT projects – this will then be reviewed and updated quarterly to ensure it always aligns with business goals
- Regularly review and report on the 24/7 day-to-day IT support services you receive from us, ensuring all end users receive the most punctual, reliable, and effective support possible
Is your IT support provider proactive enough?
If you’ve realised that you’re not receiving the level of service your business needs to optimise growth, outperform competitors, and enhance customer experience, it’s time to switch to a more proactive IT partner.
If you’re a Managing Director, CEO or Finance Director, you’re used to making decisions that impact your business. However, choosing a new IT support partner can feel like a huge leap of faith; you need to be assured that they will be proactive, secure, and reliable enough to deliver the best possible service and add value to your business. As such, you need to be aware of the level of IT support you should be receiving from your next provider.
We’ve made that easy for you by compiling the six signs to look out for when switching IT support providers. Complete the form below to download our guide now and ensure you’re receiving the proactive IT support you deserve.
