The Squad – How to assemble IT Systems that will grow your business

 A short best practice guide that provides you with the four IT skillsets and systems you need to assemble to grow your business.

Security, mobility, infrastructure, and communications are central to everything that a business does. Which is why we’ve created this free download to help your organisation understand these four key areas of IT better, and why they are integral to building a robust IT strategy that will set you up for long-term success.

IT is supposed to help you grow. Yet for many businesses, IT gets in the way.

Business leaders need in their IT systems to work like The A Team. Founders and company directors don’t have the time to worry about the intricacies, they just know that they need secure, flexible systems that the business can run on.

If you want IT you can rely on, there are the four areas of IT that you need to assemble.

Infrastructure

Take your servers, for example. They’re at the centre of it all and (put simply) they make everything work. They’re what give your teams access to your data, run their computers, and use things like scanners and printers.

Servers can be structured in many ways, they can be virtual or physical, and you may need several. It all depends on your sector, your activity, and the size of your workforce. Choosing the most effective and efficient infrastructure will make large parts of the business run much smoother, and might well save you money in the process.

Security and data protection

The average cost of a cyber-attack is £1,200. The average business faces 270 attacks per year. That adds up to £342,000 of annual risk, which is why you need some muscle to protect you.

Cyber criminals are creative, and they specialise in finding and exploiting weaknesses that are common in a sector or even unique to one business. Your security measures should be tailored to your working patterns and the systems that you use. They should also be as intelligent as they are strong, because most in the business do not have the time or the expertise to keep up with the constant evolution of cyber crime.

While prevention is always the first choice, sometimes breaches happen. No business can afford to be out of operation for any length of time, so be sure to have a data recovery system in place, should an attack find a way through.

Cloud and flexibility

Flexibility was always a good idea for a business, but in recent years it’s taken on a new meaning.

Remote and hybrid work has been technically possible for years, but only culturally possible recently. It makes sense for a lot of businesses and their employees, and cloud technology makes it especially effortless to arrange.

Features like Desktop as a Service (DaaS) mean that an employee’s computer setup is accessible on any relevant hardware. One, the desktop would have been specific to one machine. That means hardware doesn’t have to travel, which is safer from a security point of view, and more convenient for the mobile workforce.

Communications

Poor connectivity means inconvenience, embarrassment, and lost opportunities.

Client meetings that would have taken place in person are now video calls by default. Teams gather more often on screen than in the office. Most of your fundamental, business-critical communication relies on connectivity.

That often means relying on employees’ home Wi-Fi, or worse, public networks. If those connections are not consistent, they could seriously (and frequently) slow down your operations. If they’re not secure, then you’re at constant risk of malware, ransomware, or actionable GDPR breaches.

When your systems are designed specifically for remote connectivity and security, you can operate seamlessly wherever your workforce happens to be.

If you don’t want to think about what’s happening with your IT, you don’t need to. If you want a full breakdown of your new strategy, we’ll share it. Either way, you’ll get systems that help your business grow, we’ll take away the worry and we’ll give you your time back.

Get your free IT Health Check here or get in touch if you’d like to speak to a local IT specialist. You can call us on 01268 288100 or email [email protected]

Review our other resources 

Read our beginner’s guide to cloud computing.

Read 5 surprising IT statistics.

Review which types of businesses would benefit from using the cloud.

Read our guide about outsourcing your managed IT support.