"We’ll Deal With It When It Breaks” - How Bad IT Support Ruins It for Everyone

More Than Just a Baseline Function: IT Should Drive Your Business Not Just Keep the Lights On

The attitude mentioned in the headline is certainly not limited to IT but prevalent in our society. Rather than investing in preventative maintenance, strategy and long-term plans, we see seem to be stuck in a loop of low-cost focused short-term spending which ends up costing more when something eventually breaks – when it would have been cheaper to spend a consistent amount over a longer term to keep things working. This does, admittedly, look a bit different in IT, and we see many bad managed services providers deliver that The good news is: you don’t have to accept it.

Have you considered how much productivity is lost when you call at the point your laptop has died or your production can’t keep up with your demands anymore – ? We’re talking about minutes (or even hours altogether) you spend on hold or typing emails to chase open tickets. And then you’re ‘lucky’ enough to get quoted for having these issues fixed rather than them being prevented in the first place. That’s why this mentality ends up costing more - also in downtime, productivity, and missed opportunities.

Making Small Companies More Competitive

If you think you’re too small of an organisation for IT to be a strategic factor, it’s simply not true. You don’t need a multi-billion-pound budget to be able to compete. Instead, it’s the right technology decisions, from infrastructure to software and licensing, even the simple ones, that can level the playing field to make you more productive. A good IT partner who's focused on success rather than their revenue makes these decisions WITH - not FOR - you, making it possible for you as a smaller business to compete with much larger rivals. A short-sighted, bad partner would just sell you licences to fill their coffers.

What do the results of healthy IT support look like in reality? In a manufacturing context: think of production lines, shipping and customer service all streamlined, secure, resilient, and ready for growth. Speaking of the which: we know our clients appreciate the personal approach and ‘human touch’ of our customer support. That is, again, not limited to our industry but can be applied to any business: If you automate every interaction, which is now even more prevalent with AI and tends to be the case when you deal with larger organisations, this gets lost. So, while this may help you save costs, it will also actively turn away customers if they have the feeling they can’t speak to a person.

Instead, an IT partner would help you choose technology that supports your staff in helping your clients more efficiently rather than simply replace them.

Preparing for Business Growth

IT is the backbone of many businesses, and it can also easily become the bottleneck if your IT setup is more accidental than intentional while you grow. Having the right systems, tools, and processes in place before you undergo a major expansion means you can take on more customers, orders and complexity without getting overwhelmed or just hiring more people. Especially now with more sophisticated AI tools becoming available (think AI agents), it can become quite complex choosing what’s best for you and how to use them. A strategic partnership with an IT expert is where you’ll gain the confidence in your systems and tools that allow you to grow without business disruption. When was the last time your provider initiated a forward-looking conversation in the last 12 months? If that hasn’t happened, it’s evidence you’re working with a vendor rather than a partner.

Risk Mitigation

Beyond that, there are risks: Taking AI as an example: while there are a multitude of benefits of using it, one downside is the risk of potential data breaches if you don’t know what you’re doing. We’ve been hearing about a lot of this happening in the last few months which should serve as a reminder that cybersecurity isn’t a separate but indeed a very integral part of your IT strategy. But with new technology comes the complexity, so it’s always best to chat someone who works with it daily.

The “Good Enough” a Mediocre IT Support Delivers

Have you ever worked with cloud software, e.g. Microsoft/Office 365 and then had to go back to an older version, and it felt just… clunky?

While user complaints are common, you learn to appreciate the functionality (especially when it comes to cross-app integration) when you look back at legacy software, manual spreadsheets and disconnected tools. Now there’s so much software out there and platforms that work together/talk to each other, using the aforementioned is certainly ‘cheaper’ in the short-term, but the frustration of a lack of streamlined collaboration, errors, slow processes, and as a result staff frustration does add up fast.

SMEs that modernise thoughtfully and strategically see ROI more quickly.

While your MSP may keep things running, they should also be the ones pushing you towards better tools.

Ask yourself: When was the last time your IT provider proactively recommended replacing something that still works because something better exists?' That’s the difference between a vendor and a strategic partner. Note there is of course a distinction between selling you technology for the sake it (the kind you don’t need but generates a commission for your MSP) vs technology you do need because it increases productivity and efficiency, and genuinely drives your business forward.

Cybersecurity Is Not Just a Big Business Problem

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Company size doesn’t matter anymore for cybercriminals. They’ll just throw a net (e.g. phishing emails) and see who falls for it because it’s simply that easy, and some phishing emails are now so well done, they’re hard to differentiate from legitimate supplier emails. SMEs are in fact increasingly the target of cyberattacks because they (supposedly) don’t have the budget and/or knowledge in form of IT staff, which makes them easy targets. But cybersecurity is about more than budgets, it’s about education. What you should be looking at is a proactive IT function that puts basic but effective protections in place, and reassures customers and partners that you can be trusted with their data.

Many SMEs assume their provider has cybersecurity covered, and the real gaps are discovered after a breach – see our webinar with Paul Abbott from Knights of Old for an example of that.

Ask your current provider for their written security baseline for your business. If they can’t produce one, it’s time to have a conversation.

Technology That Empowers Your People

For smaller teams, the right tools make an outsized difference. And in terms of trends we’ve been seeing recently, it’s one matter to let go of staff to replace them with AI, it’s a completely different one to support them with it. When talking about the latter, you really want to make it easier for your staff and find a tool that’s fit for purpose. But that goes for anything: collaboration platforms, automation of repetitive tasks, or simply reliable kit. IT directly affects how productive and engaged your staff are day-to-day, but in today’s technology jungle, you’re generally spoilt for choice, so someone has to put in the hours to do the research to choose the right one.

A good IT partner does this research FOR you. If you're the one googling tool comparisons at 10pm, you're not getting the value you're paying for.

Building Resilience on a Budget

What would you do if you suffered from a ransomware attack and/or were locked out of your system? It’s a fact that SMEs are often more vulnerable to disruption. That’s why it remains so important to incorporate resilience planning into your strategy and build it affordably, so you're not running around like a headless chicken when things go wrong.

While 61% of organisations can backup large amounts of data within 24 hours, only 54% can restore it within a day and 36% need at least one day to resume full operations, according to a report by Veeam. Of those who took longer to recover, 34% reported financial losses and 30% even lost data permanently.

If you watch the aforementioned webinar, you’ll also see that an organisation can supposedly have all cybersecurity measures in place and still go into administration when it’s being hit by malware.

Our advice: Ask your provider when they last tested your backups. Not if they ran but if they can actually restore from them, and how this would still be possible in the case of a malware attack.

No One-Size-Fits-All Support

This is probably the most important aspect. Not everything works for everyone. Whether it's an in-house hire, a fractional CTO, or a trusted managed service provider, SMEs have more options than ever. The key is moving from "whoever fixes the computers" to a relationship that helps the business grow, and to have enough capacity to do so.

The symptoms of having outgrown your current provider:

Tickets taking days to be resolved
No strategic reviews and no accountability for point 1
Surprise invoices and increasing bills without reasonable justification
Same “have you tried turning it off and on again” response

If you tick any of the boxes above, it’s time to look elsewhere for support.

What to Do Next

You don't need a massive IT budget to start thinking differently. Start by asking: is our technology helping us grow, or just keeping the lights on? The answer will tell you everything about where to focus next.

You can get started by having a 30-minute IT health-check call with us where we’ll review your current setup and tell you honestly whether you need to switch providers or just push your current one harder. It’s free and has no strings attached, so you can just take away the information and improve your business one way or another.