IT Costs

With the current state of the economy and cost of living pressures, we have put together some key items to help with IT costs.

If you have a problem with your computer, restart it before requesting support. Many issues are solved via a simple restart.

In general, restart your computer often. If you need to remote into your office computer from home, you need to leave it on. If you don’t, treat your computer like your car, not your fridge.

If you still have an issue, contact us right away. Leaving it will only waste your time, and therefore money. The problem may also get worse, or you may try to fix it yourself which may add to the diagnosis time when we look at it.

Know your passwords. Use a password manager like Last Pass. Means we don’t waste time waiting for or resetting passwords.

Be familiar with the Office 365 portal. If you have a computer or software issue, you can continue working in the portal. If there is an issue with OneDrive or SharePoint not syncing an item properly. Check the file via OneDrive/SharePoint in your browser to see if the issue is also there. Check the OneDrive app is running. If not, restart your computer.

Tell us when users leave your business. Not only for security but also so we can reduce your licensing costs. We can optimize your licenses by reallocating them based on changing user needs. Also, can reduce the spare license if not in use.

If you have computers no longer being used, drop them into us for decommissioning and secure erasing.

Don’t fall for scams. Be aware of spam and phishing emails, engaging with these emails can at worst cost your business enormous amounts of money, and at the leas waste your time replying to fake emails. If you’re not sure about an email or message, call or email us first so we don’t have to spend time re-secure your computer and network.

Train yourself and your staff on general computer skills but also Security Access Training. You can have a year of training for the cost of us having to resolve an avoidable security issue.

Keep your important and industry software and installation keys along with any corresponding usernames and passwords. We don’t want to waste time not being able to finish a new computer installation for example because you don’t have these items.

When submitting support requests, be sure to clarify who the issue is for and/or which computer. Also, a brief to the point description of what the issues is. When we have to chase the user for more information, its wastes time.

Answer our calls. When we receive an urgent support request we will try and call as soon as possible. When we do this, we mostly get voicemail. If you submit a support request, be available to take our call.

Take our advice. We have detailed knowledge on a very large range of technical issues. We will advise you on want you need, which is sometimes not what you want.

If you have a simple, non-urgent issues, don’t call, send us an email or better yet, book in via our website.

If you have an outage of some sort, internet, email, banking, power, check sites like Down Detector so we don’t investigate your issue and then find there is an outage. Also check with a co-worker. Are they having the same issue?

Apple Macs. We see the most amount of wasted time working with users trying to use Apple products. Use a business computer for a business system. Apple Macs cost 2-4 times as much as to work on. Also, make sure you have your Apple ID’s usernames and passwords handy. We see work from home staff trying to use an old and slow mac which is very inefficient.

Keep your website backend systems and software up to date. Websites are often forgotten about once they are designed, then down the track your site gets compromised which can take many hours to resolve. It’s also embarrassing for your business reputation.

Buying at cheapest price possible and making purchases from retail vendors without IT guidance. The system may work, but they may not meet your needs. Are you sure that is the right operating system? Will the device function with your software/server? Let us help you choose the right tool for the job. Buying cheaper usually means more support costs and early replacement. Talk to us first before making purchases.

Implement security best practices to avoid unnecessary support costs, panic and embarrassment. We can do a quick security audit with you to come up with a security plan. Work with us to identify misconfigurations, missing/bad policies, high alerts, and risky sign in attempts for user accounts.

Multifactor authentication (or two factor authentication) everything. Especially email and banking but also key web-based products and services. Recovering from a security compromise is wasted time and causes unnecessary stress for all involved. Implementing necessary MFA Authentication for all end-users can help prevent, detect, and reduce the phishing attacks, data loss, and IT costs.

Using outdated software because it is working now. Will come back to bite you. Stay current with hardware as well as your key software.

Identify and plan with us on what is necessary for business operations. Consider long term costs and maintenance over short term gains.

Be involved in your backups. Have backups for everything. Especially extremely important systems that are critical to your business. What happens if the primary server fails? Do you have a recovery plan. For example, having a second machine on site and ready to be turned on if there is a system failure could save days or weeks without operation. 

If you have online backup setup by us manually run at least once a week. Search for ‘Backup Manager’ via the start-menu to open the page where you can run the backup manually and view its progress.

Maintain your computer. Periodically check your devices storage space. The TreeSize application installed on your computer is an effective way to see what is taking up space on your drive. Move important files to OneDrive. Right-click on any files you don’t need synced to your computer and select ‘Free up space’. This will keep a copy of the file only on the server and free up space on your PC, if you need to access it again, it can be downloaded by opening it as you normally would.

If you are spending a lot of time doing something that affects your productivity, let us know, we may have a solution for you that can help you work for efficiently.