In an increasingly digital world, technology is one of the key factors that can help companies outplay their competitors and better serve their customers. Unfortunately, many small and medium-sized businesses in northern NJ don’t have the time or budget required to build an in-house team of IT experts.
For these reasons, more and more SMBs are turning to third-party IT consulting firms to help them become more productive and protect their data.
The Benefits of SMB IT Consulting for Businesses in Northern NJ
As a small or medium-sized business, you might not feel like you’re “big enough” to have a relationship with an IT consulting firm. For the following reasons, however, SMBs are those that perhaps stand the most to gain from partnering with an IT consulting firm.
- More time. It’s all too easy for SMBs to spread themselves too thin, frantically putting out IT “fires” such as unexpected crashes and outages. While these might be urgent events indeed, they’re also not helping you achieve the core functionality of your business: serving your clients. IT consulting firms can take these vexing responsibilities off your hands, giving you back the time you need to grow your company.
- Lower costs. Building an in-house IT team is expensive. Not only do you need to pay your employees’ salaries and benefits, you also need to cover the costs of hiring, training, and onboarding. By leveraging economies of scale, IT consulting firms are usually quite a bit cheaper than using full-time employees. They also use a convenient “pay as you go” model.
- Better productivity. When you place your IT responsibilities in the hands of experts, you’ll be amazed at what you can achieve. Well-managed IT resources have less downtime, better reliability, and improved performance. You can achieve this synergy across your entire IT setup, from servers and email systems to databases and mobile devices.
How IT Consulting Can Help SMBs in Northern NJ Protect Their Data
Data loss and theft are among the biggest threats to any company’s IT resources. Unfortunately, 87 percent of small businesses have no cybersecurity plan. This may be due to the fact that 82 percent of SMBs don’t believe they have any information worth stealing—a misconception that’s all too common among companies without deep technical expertise.
Aside from customers’ sensitive data such as addresses and credit cards, your IT systems may contain confidential information such as trade secrets, personal emails. The right technology partner for SMBs in northern New Jersey can help you protect this data in multiple ways.
- Encryption. Whether through external attacks or insider threats, data breaches are one of the most crippling events for any organization. According to a study by UPS Capital, the average cost of a breach for a small business may be as high as $84,000 to $148,000. By encrypting your data, however, you can make it worthless in the hands of attackers even in the event of a breach. Anyone without the right decryption key will only be in possession of a jumbled mess of 0s and 1s.
- BYOD policies. To save on the costs of purchasing and maintenance, many SMBs have “bring your own device” policies for their employees, which allow them to work on their personal computers and smartphones. However, this presents a number of security risks. IT consulting firms can help you develop a smart, sensible BYOD policy that includes monitoring of device activity and security software to keep devices secure when connected to the company network.
- Security patches. The longer you fail to keep your hardware and software up-to-date with frequent patching, the more you’ll be at risk of falling victim to a successful attack. For example, the devastating 2017 data breach at Equifax, which exposed the sensitive financial information of 143 million customers, was entirely preventable: it occurred via a third-party software vulnerability with a patch that had been available for months. The right IT consulting firm can help you set up the automatic installation of patches and updates, making your most valuable assets more protected.
- Backups. 62 percent of small businesses don’t backup their data on a regular basis. Whether it’s a hardware crash or a natural disaster, every company will eventually face a catastrophe that results in data loss, presenting a major disruption to your operations. By setting up automatic backups for your data, especially in the cloud, IT consulting firms can help your business avert disaster.
IT Consulting for SMBs in Northern New Jersey
For many SMBs in northern New Jersey, working with an IT consulting firm is well worth the cost—saving them untold hours of frustration and wasted effort. The right consulting partner will work with you to understand your company on a deeper level and become a full partner committed to your business success.
If you’re looking for an SMB IT consulting solution in northern NJ, look no further. Reach out to Techwerxe today for a free consultation. We’ll discuss your unique needs and objectives to find out how we can maximize your business efficiencies, resolve your technical problems, and protect your sensitive enterprise data.
