e-skills UK Guide

Supporting your IT

Setting up and managing IT for small businesses can be complicated and difficult or you could try and keep it simple and cost effective. Investing in the right IT at the right time will enable you to control expenditure and enable you to get to know the systems and technologies at a slower pace. Remember that many small businesses run perfectly fine with a single PC connected to the internet – they don’t all need lots of computing power and software.

Maintaining and supporting your IT systems depends on how complicated they are. For a simple installation you may be able to subscribe to an off site support provider for between £200 - £500 for the year. More complex installations can cost £thousands to support each year.

If you require onsite support this may be charged as an extra, probably between £25 – £75 per hour depending where you go.

You will need to justify this cost. Think if this IT support as an insurance policy and consider what you would loose in terms of time or data if something should go wrong.

That will then give you an idea on how much you should consider spending for technical support.

By supporting your IT infrastructure properly you will save money by reducing system down time.

If you have an emergency IT problem now you may want to read this guide.

Support options

There are a number of ways in which you can support your IT systems:

● Learn about IT and support yourself. This option may be useful if you have a very small business and you have an interest in IT. You will need to decide if supporting IT is where you should be spending your time rather than selling more products or managing customers. Every minute you spend fixing computers you are not growing your business.

● Employ a person to be your support technician. For small businesses with less than 25 or so people this is not an option, unless you have peculiar demands on IT that are out of the ordinary. A full time support person will need a salary between £15,000 and £25,000 per year. Consider if there is enough work for them – after all you are a small business.

● Use another member of staff. Sometimes you may find a sales person or production person has an interest in computers outside of work. If you trust their judgement and expertise then you may be able to get them spending some of their time doing IT support. Consider what impact this will have on their other role, as ultimately they will only have so many hours each day.

● Use a third party. As you would call a plumber to fix your water pipes calling in IT experts is probably the best way of dealing with IT problems. It would be better if you have a regular support agreement with a third party as many of them will allow so many hours of onsite support as part of the agreement. Even if they are not called to fix a specific problem, they could still come along and carry out a monthly system test or check your backups.

● Use a friend. If you have a friend that is willing to help then fine. Just make sure they have the necessary skills and understand how much you will (or will not!) be paying them for the work.

Selecting a support company

You may wish to take a look at the guide that covers how to choose a consultancy partner in combination with reading this guide.

You will need to understand precisely what you want from a support company:

● Do you want regular maintenance?
● Do you want onsite support (i.e. someone coming to your office/home).
● What IT systems are you using? Are they out of the ordinary?
● What skills do you have/your team have?
● Are you able to explain any problems easily or is IT all new to you?
● Do you want this company to supply your hardware and software? If so you may be able to negotiate a discount on a support contract.

When you buy computer equipment you will often receive an offer of support from the hardware or software manufacturer. Some of this may cover a free of charge period, which could be cost effective. Extended warrantees may also be a useful safety blanket.

The internet is also full of help and advice – which is fine if your PC is still able to connect to web sites! You should also consider if your time is, again, best spent doing such support work.

IT support companies

The following companies offer technical support for small businesses:

Commercial suppliers

We do not recommend specific products or suppliers; instead we provide you with a representative sample which covers the range of suppliers/products available. You may choose to look at these suppliers or products but this is entirely at your discretion.

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