For the purpose of this discussion, we’ll define a small business as being one with less than about fifty computers. This isn’t an arbitrary figure, it’s the size that most small business owners agree they could justify a full time IT staff member.

Within this definition I see three different types of business. First there’s the person running their business by themselves, from home or from a small office.

These people are setup similar to most people with a personal use computer at home and really only have a need for occasional or ad-hoc support.

Then there’s the person who’s business has grown, they’ve moved out of the home office and started employing staff using PCs. They have roughly between two and about nine PCs. These businesses have a small network and maybe even a server. However they struggle to find the budget, or they can’t justify spending the money they have to maintain their network, even though it probably needs regular maintenance.

Finally, those who’ve grown past the point where they need to cut corners to get by and now they just want to do things properly. This is where things start to come together. That doesn’t mean that things are now simple. These businesses have a new problem as they approach the fifty computer mark, should they hire a full time IT professional to look after their network? The costs of IT support are getting high and the temptation is to say “Hey we can hire someone full time”.

For the smallest of our business owners, things are pretty straightforward. Make sure you buy good equipment, keep it up to date and make sure that you’ve got good backups and antivirus protection and that you’re checking them regularly. Once or twice a year you might want to bring in an IT person to spend a few of hours checking out your system just to make sure that it’s as up to date and as healthy as you thought. Make sure that the backups really are running as smoothly as you think. Apart from this, there’s not a lot more to do.

Our mid-sized, small business owners are in the toughest position. I sometimes think of these businesses as being “stuck in the middle”. Most of these business owners don’t really see the need for regular maintenance service for their network. Even though they need it. My experience is that these businesses are the ones with the most poorly maintained systems. They’re putting all of their effort into growing and cutting corners on things that seem like luxuries. The fact is that these businesses have a real network that needs real support. They just need support that’s scaled down a bit from their bigger business counterparts. If a business owner in this category can understand and accept this, then their systems will run more smoothly and they’ll have far fewer headaches. A bi-monthly or monthly maintenance cycle is appropriate for these businesses.

The larger of the small businesses have almost always realised that they have a system that needs regular part time assistance. A monthly, fortnightly or weekly service cycle is required for these businesses. The hard part comes when you approach fifty computers and you start looking at the cost of IT consultants. The temptation hers is that you think that it might be more cost effective to hire a full time IT person in house. All I can say is PLEASE DON’T DO IT! Usually a full time IT person in a business like this, is going to either be bored and move on quickly or they’re not going to be the kind of go getter that you want anyway. I will say that I’ve met exceptions to this rule, but they’re very rare because the person just isn’t going to get the kind of variety and stimulation they need in a job. Wait until you get bigger again and can hire two people.

If you need help with your small business IT, contact us www.factor.com.au

More importantly it’s a great way for businesses to save money.

You can save money by cutting out those expensive line rental costs that you have for each of your phone lines. You can also save money with long distance land line calls being untimed. You can also save money with standards based equipment which you can use even if you change to a different Telco provider.

Want to know more? Part 2 will cover what you need to do to test the waters. Call us www.factor.com.au