How to reduce your IT costs
With the current state of the economy and cost of living pressures, we’ve put together some key practical tips to help with IT costs.
Small habits that save real money
Restart first
If you have a problem with your computer, restart it before requesting support. Many issues are solved via a simple restart — restart often.
Know your passwords
Use a password manager like LastPass. It means we don’t waste time waiting for or resetting passwords during a support session.
Use the Microsoft 365 portal
Be familiar with the Office 365 portal. If you have a computer or software issue, you can continue working in the portal. Check if OneDrive/SharePoint is syncing correctly via your browser.
Tell us when staff leave
Not only for security, but so we can reduce your licensing costs. We can optimise your licences by reallocating them based on changing user needs and can reduce spare licences not in use.
Decommission old computers
If you have computers no longer being used, drop them in to us for decommissioning and secure erasing.
Don’t fall for scams
Spam and phishing emails can at worst cost your business enormous amounts of money. If you’re not sure about an email, call or email us first before clicking anything.
Train your staff
Train yourself and your staff on general computer skills and Security Access Training. You can have a year of training for the cost of us having to resolve an avoidable security issue.
Keep your licences handy
Keep your important software and installation keys along with corresponding usernames and passwords. We don’t want to waste time not being able to finish a new computer installation because you don’t have these items.
Be specific in support requests
When submitting support requests, clarify which issue is for and/or which computer. A brief, to-the-point description of what the issue is saves diagnostic time. When we have to chase the user for more information, it 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.
Consider your hardware choices
We see the most amount of wasted time working with users trying to use Apple products for a business system. Apple Macs cost 2–4 times as much to work on. Also, make sure you have your Apple ID usernames and passwords handy.
Implement security best practices
Security issues cause unnecessary support, 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.
Enable MFA everywhere
Multifactor authentication (or two-factor authentication) everything — especially email and banking but also key web-based products and services. Recovering from a security compromise wastes time and causes unnecessary stress for all involved.
Keep software up to date
Using outdated software because it is working now will come back to bite you. Stay current with hardware as well as your key software.
Plan long term
Identify and plan with us on what is necessary for business operations. Consider long-term costs and maintenance over short-term gains. Buying cheaper usually means more support costs and early replacement.
Be involved in your backups
Have backups for everything — especially extremely important systems critical to your business. What happens if the primary server fails? Do you have a recovery plan? 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.
Maintain your computers
Periodically check your device’s 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 so the local drive stays clean.
Use simple support channels first
If you have a simple non-urgent issue, don’t call — send us an email or better yet, book 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 out there is an outage.