Many companies spend a large amount of money on computer maintenance or server maintenance in case a server is damaged. But sometimes this is due to poor planning of IT expenses, which increase considerably by not carrying out preventive maintenance of possible incidents that occur in the daily life of a company. How to save costs in IT maintenance then?
It is also very striking how SMEs sometimes consider IT costs as something that is not worth investing much in and do not have any disaster recovery plan. Only when there is a problem, they seek help from cybersecurity and maintenance experts However, costs increase when computers are not well maintained, or a lot of time is wasted trying to do things in the wrong and unprofessional way.
In this post we want to suggest some tips to save costs in computer maintenance so that your company can optimize its variable expenses.
Keys to save money on computer maintenance
Where does your company invest the most in IT costs? In the purchase of new equipment? hiring cybersecurity audit? In virus cleaning or computer formatting? In the purchase of new software? In cloud backups?
IT costs should be balanced, within a complete and effective strategy so that the company can keep:
- Cybersecurity
- Operational capability
- Resource optimization
If your company is over investing in any of these 3 areas, it is probably because you are not investing well. You are spending a lot, perhaps, on server maintenance, when perhaps you would be better off investing in a good antivirus or having your computers well updated, or even switching from Windows to Mac or Linux.
With this in mind, we are going to give you some tips on how you can save on IT costs.
1. Prevention is cheaper than maintenance
It is always preferable to prevent cyber threats from attacking your computers and company servers, than to proceed with maintenance once they have been attacked.
So don’t wait until you have a problem that cripples your business for days and a computer maintenance expert has to come in person to try to fix it. Keep good computer maintenance on your computers so that this never happens.
2. Calculate the IT maintenance costs of your virtual content.
Companies tend to undervalue the virtual, believing that it will never disappear. But don’t we take more care of papers and physical objects, so that they don’t get lost or deteriorate?
On the Internet there is a high risk that your data can be affected by a computer malware or ransom, or everything can be lost if you are forced to format your computer to recover the computer data. So, you can calculate the cost of everything you have and think about whether it is worth taking the risk of losing it. When you realize this, investing in backups is an excellent way to keep the security of your business data.. And if not, just ask those businessmen who have lost clients, databases and a lot of important files because of a virus.
3. Never work below the threshold of your resources.
What’s the point of working with a 4GB RAM computer if, when it comes down to it, it’s not optimized to put them to good use? If you have hundreds of applications that load at startup and your computer is slower than a turtle, you are wasting a precious hardware that cost you $1000 on tasks that are not optimized:
- Are becoming much slower than they could be.
- You want to do something and your computer won’t let you.
So never work below the threshold of your resources. Optimize your computing resources to get the most out of them. And this does not only work for computers, but also for computer networks and shared network resources.
4. Have a long-term plan
Let’s suppose that your company wants to create a website to sell on the Internet and you have a budget for it. Never stay with the first option! You must have a long-term plan, because whenever you invest something in IT, you must work with a goal in mind.
Think that if you are going to create a web page, it is of utmost importance that it can produce a profit in the future and you can recover the investment. Forget the adventures of creating free websites that do not offer any added value to the user. Create a website that really produces results, without having to invest a large amount of money.
5. Get help from computer maintenance experts
Is it better for your company to have local or offsite backups, or both? How do you use the available IT resources to get the most out of them? What should be the characteristics of your IT network?
Often, due to lack of advice, companies do not make the most of their resources or neglect important aspects to achieve their objectives. Always ask your IT maintenance expert for information to achieve the best results.
Have these tips helped you to save costs in computer maintenance?