IT Costs are Rising on a Global Scale…Here’s Why

No matter how big your business is, you’ll always have technology expenses. It’s just a fact of the current workplace, and your profits will be inexorably tied to how well your IT works for you. Furthermore, the more IT costs rise, the more impact small and medium-sized businesses will feel from them. Today, we wanted to address this issue and how you can minimize the frustrations that stem from seemingly uncontrollable technology costs.

Hardware Costs Are On the Rise

The supply chain and events all around the world have impacted hardware costs dramatically. The microprocessor shortage has in turn affected people consuming the technology—businesses included. With the costs of components not decreasing anytime soon, you can expect this to become problematic for your business. This inflation leads many businesses to just abandon the purchasing of new hardware altogether.

We know that hardware refreshes are frustrating enough without having to worry about your budget, which is why we do our best to hook your business up with affordable and effective technology that suits its needs. Through comprehensive consulting, we’ll help you get the best bang for your buck.

Cybercrime is Also a Factor

You know you need to invest in cybersecurity, but do you know what you should focus on and how? You don’t want to deal with a data breach or a ransomware infection, so we urge you to consider just how you are going to protect your business so that you can prevent these expensive issues from impacting you even after the fact. You might think you won’t encounter a security issue with your business, but you can’t know that for sure—and therein lies the problem.

When you have a lot of options at your disposal and you’re not confident in any of them, we urge you to consider investing in three primary areas of security. They are:

• Employee training: Most security exploits happen because someone on your staff falls for a scam, whether it’s a phishing attack or accidentally downloading the wrong file from the Internet. A lot of good can come from training your employees to identify potentially hazardous situations, and trust us when we say that paying for proper security training will pay for itself.
• Security tools: Preventative tools that can help you keep your network secure are great ways to prevent small issues from becoming larger and dramatically more expensive problems. It’s far easier and less expensive to put a stop to an attack in the early stages compared to after it has weaseled its way into your network and corrupted or encrypted it, for example. There are many security tools on the market, so we recommend you work with One Up Solutions Northwest to identify the ones that will best suit your needs.
• Annual security assessment: Similarly, a proactive method of keeping your IT safe and secure, like performing annual security assessments, can help you preemptively address problems before they become even bigger and more dangerous. It helps to have this assessment performed by a third party, too, so that the results are not skewed or biased.

Businesses Don’t Know What They Need

Unfortunately, investing in the wrong parts of your IT can lead to more expensive implementations over the long term. Indecision leads to disorganization, so if you aren’t sure what you need, then change your mind halfway through the implementation, you can bet that the next project will be vastly more expensive because you have the failed attempt haunting your every step.

To ensure that you know what your business needs from its IT, we recommend sitting down for a discussion with a knowledgeable IT consultant like those at One Up Solutions Northwest. We can help you make the most informed decision possible so you can appropriate your funds in the most efficient manner. To learn more, contact us at (503) 278-5011.