Business resilience refers to an organization’s ability to continue to provide products and services, even during business disruptions. In short, it determines whether you can continue business operations when you encounter problems that you would not normally expect, such as cyber attacks, severe weather, natural disasters, outages and other unforeseen problems.

Needless to say, this is one of the elements a business needs to improve upon. Unfortunately, it’s often easier said than done, especially if you’re currently working on growing† Nevertheless, if you are planning to increase the resiliency of your business, one of the best ways to do it is to hire an information technology (IT) support firm, and here are four reasons why.

1. Improves your company’s ability to detect cyber-attacks

In recent years, the cybersecurity threat landscape has grown dramatically. The same technology people use to protect digital assets is the same technology that threatens them. While there are countermeasures against such threats, the probability of a breach will never be zero. And if a breach does occur, it can deter you from running your business.

For that reason, experts advise companies to have IT support, such as: secure logic and similar bodies, standby. That way, if these threats ever slip through the cracks, you don’t have to add them to the list of things to worry about. Instead, you can focus on customer service.

This is one of the most recognizable ways IT support can increase business resilience. Additionally, according to a Gartner study, the average cost of downtime is $5,600 per minute. That would mean IT support can save you the money you’d otherwise lose in the few minutes following a cyberattack. (1)

2. Centralizes your files for easy and quick access

Nowadays an organization can no longer do without digital files. Even mom-and-pop stores depend on digital assets to some degree. Perhaps the most important difference is how each company handles files. For local businesses, having files on one computer is usually enough. But for businesses like call centers it’s critical to have access to these files at all times if possible.

This is especially important for the resilience of your business, as you will likely need access to files to continue providing products and services to customers even during disruptions. That’s what cloud computing is for: to centralize your files for easy and quick access. (2)

Companies have already experienced this at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. Those who have already implemented cloud computing can move to remote working almost immediately. Meanwhile, those who had yet to take the first step towards cloud computing were left behind.

It goes without saying that cloud computing is essential for business resilience. Unfortunately, not everyone is familiar with or expert in setting up such a complex infrastructure. And this is where IT support comes in. By enlisting the help of such agencies, the implementation of cloud computing should become more manageable. As a result, your business can reap the benefits of this technology and increase your company’s resilience.

3. Prevents customers from being left in the dark

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a type of system that includes several functions, all of which are aimed at maintaining your relationship with your customers. These features may include the ability to follow up on previous customers, respond to inquiries, store customer contact information, and record all activities with specific customers. But what does this have to do with corporate resilience? (3)

A CRM system allows you to perform various functions to increase the resilience of your business. Examples include the following:

• Extracts real-time data from past customer interactions and uses it to understand how to improve your customer service even in unforeseen situations.
• Keep customer contact information up-to-date and accessible so your reps can provide better and faster customer service with or without business interruptions.
• Enables your reps to take over a customer request when an agent is unavailable due to emergencies and avoid dropping requests due to such scenarios. (3)

CRM systems can be incredibly powerful when used properly. But not everyone can realize the benefits or advantages of such an infrastructure by simply implementing the technology.

It often happens that you do not make full use of the CRM system. But with an IT support agency, you basically have a group of people who can fully support you in its implementation. In other words, IT support allows you to maximize CRM infrastructures, which in turn increases your business’ resilience by minimizing the likelihood of customer request dropouts.

4. Takes the pressure off your staff

One of the biggest challenges of business resilience is not having enough agents to handle customer inquiries. They call this a staff shortage and it can even be detrimental to business operations without disruptions. While it is possible to solve such problems by hiring a few extra agents for your company, that often takes a lot of time to process.

However, it would be a very different story if you used IT support agencies instead. By hiring an IT support agency, you can effectively access the in-depth experience and knowledge of a group of talented individuals without the hassle of onboarding or recruiting. (4)

Not only does this lighten the burden on your HR staff, but you also reduce the pressure and responsibilities placed on your staff. This, in turn, can help with business resilience, as your key staff can focus on core business activities rather than subordinate but time-consuming ones.

Examples of tasks that an IT support agency can take over are:

• Update stocks
• View customer details
• Mention product information
• Create invoices (4)

Shutting down

Business resilience is one of those topics that experts rarely address, perhaps because they’re busy with other aspects of a business. Or maybe entrepreneurs don’t think it’s an essential part of business management. Either way, if you want to grow your business, at some point you will have to worry about improving the resiliency of your business. And hiring an IT support agency would be a great way to go about this.

References:

1. “The Cost of Downtime”, Source: https://blogs.gartner.com/andrew-lerner/2014/07/16/the-cost-of-downtime/
2. “10 Advantages and Disadvantages of Cloud Storage”, Source: https://www.promax.com/blog/10-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-cloud-storage
3. “Top Benefits of Customer Relationship Management”, Source: https://waypathconsulting.com/top-benefits-of-customer-relationship-management/
4. “8 Quick Ways to Increase Employee Productivity in the Workplace,” Source: https://clockify.me/blog/productivity/increase-employee-productivity/