Businesses in jeopardy due to inadequate IT
1 min read
Manufacturing businesses must have the staff and resources to avoid IT emergencies – and that is becoming ever more difficult to achieve.
That's an assertion from K3 Managed Services, which, in the second of its monthly IT guides, highlights the dangers that an under-resourced IT department can present.
The IT support company, which is part of Syspro and Microsoft ERP software house K3, observes that not only can manufacturers suffer downtime but also, with networks down, here are real risks of businesses losses.
"If you have to rely on someone else to restore your system, you could suffer long term damage to your business," states the guidance.
Further, the increasing importance of IT in business is transforming the role of IT staff – and making it difficult to find, train and keep them.
"IT staff turnover is high, which results in companies facing the ongoing threat of losing high-paid, trained IT staff once they have gained the knowledge and experience necessary to move up the career ladder," says the firm.
And it continues: "Unless IT delivery is a core activity for a business, it does not make economic sense to keep investing in extra resources to stay on top of things."
K3's suggestion: "By forming a creative relationship between directors and IT staff, a business can keep track of its IT maintenance. Just as IT staff need senior executives to understand how developments – like social networking, collaborative IT and a mobile infrastructure – can make a business more effective, executives need IT staff to have a clear grasp of their business objectives, targets and development plans."
And hence, unsurprisingly, K3's observation that outsourcing IT makes a lot of sense. "As businesses move away from in-house developed systems and towards advances in software, such as cloud computing, IT staff are able to concentrate on productivity and value-adding activities, leaving minor IT problems a thing of the past," says the firm.
"However, even then, bigger IT emergencies can cost a business greatly, if there is nobody to step into the shoes of the IT technician. This is where outsourcing IT makes good business sense."
