The holiday season and the end of another year are fast approaching. Your business may be due to close its doors for a week or two, allowing you and your team to enjoy a well-earned break. And it’s a busy time, with lots to do before you shut the office for a while — including an IT tune-up.
This is vital to get your IT infrastructure in solid shape for the year ahead and improve your team’s efficiency. But what does it involve?
Here are five steps to help you get started.
Assess Your Hardware’s Condition and Performance
Your hardware has served you well in the past year. But is it starting to show signs of impending glitches or even total failure?
Check your hardware ahead of the holidays to see how it performs generally. Team members won’t be able to work at their best if they can’t rely on their devices to run at optimal levels. If it’s time to invest in new hardware for the coming year, make it a priority.
Businesses that work with a managed IT services provider can receive expert assistance with sourcing new hardware. That will make the process easier and help you find the solutions best suited to your business needs.
Make Sure All Systems are Updated
When you’re busy ahead of the holidays, it may be easy to miss or overlook notifications about software updates. You and your employees might decide to leave patches until after the break while you focus on crucial tasks.
However, updates are essential to keep the software running at its best. Working with the latest versions can improve productivity and efficiency, as older versions may be slower and lack certain features.
Before you close your doors for the holidays, check all software for potential updates. Remind staff to perform updates when prompted and to check if updates are required in case the software doesn’t send notifications when new versions are available. If possible, activating automatic updates can streamline the process significantly.
Back-Up All Critical Data Before the Holidays
Disaster recovery and business continuity are a must for companies on any scale. Not only do you need to store important files securely on your premises, but they should be backed up to the cloud, too. Otherwise, you risk losing critical data in the event of an unfortunate incident, such as:
Fire
Flood
Vandalism
Theft
Cyber attack
Malware that disrupts systems
Hardware failure
In some cases, a disaster might leave your office unusable for days or even weeks. But with a disaster recovery and business continuity plan, your team can keep working from home or another office. This is important before the year-end holidays for two reasons:
You know essential files from across the entire year will be stored securely.
You and certain team members can access the files they need remotely. This is helpful for employees who need to work from home for any reason in the run-up to the holidays, such as if their kids finish school before your business’s break begins.
Ideally, you will have a system in place that backs up files automatically, so your team doesn’t need to handle it manually. Otherwise, a provider of managed IT services can set this up for you.
Check Your Cybersecurity Setup
A strong and effective cybersecurity strategy will help protect your business from potential attacks all year round. But as the holidays approach and employees start to focus on the prospect of a week or two without work, it’s easy to become distracted.
That may increase the risk of oversights and a drop in vigilance (even if only a little). Any cyber-attacks that strike your business could create severe disruptions and prevent your team from working at their best (or at all). An attack such as ransomware, for example, would lock key files and render them inaccessible until the perpetrator’s ransom is paid. And the average ransom paid by Canadian organizations was more than $1 million as of 2023.
To minimize the likelihood of a cybersecurity breach, run a comprehensive check of your cybersecurity measures in the run up to the holidays. This will improve your chances of finishing the year without an attack, and allow your team to work efficiently without being thrown off track by a security incident.
It’s also worth reminding staff to stay vigilant, even if the office is becoming a little more laid-back as the holidays approach.
Schedule On-Site IT Efficiency Maintenance to Prevent Issues
If technical issues affect any of your systems or servers in the final weeks of the year, it may be tempting to push on without bringing an IT expert into your office to fix them. The prospect of finding a local technician and scheduling a visit might seem like an unnecessary burden when you’re about to finish for the holidays.
However, technical problems can have a tangible impact on efficiency:
● Systems may run more slowly than usual
● Communication and collaboration tools could fail
● Work can become harder for everyone, generally
If necessary, contact an IT professional to assess the issues and put them right before the holidays. You can end the year knowing that your systems are running smoothly, ready for January (and beyond).
With a comprehensive managed IT services package, on-site maintenance and computer repair solutions will be included. You can depend on your provider to send a specialist to perform maintenance and fixes at any time.
How to Keep Your IT Setup Running Properly All Year
Performing a year-end IT tune-up can improve your efficiency and empower your team to work productively before the holidays. But working with a provider of managed IT services will make the entire process simpler and cost-effective. You can depend on a team of IT professionals to strengthen your IT infrastructure throughout the year.
NETWORTH’s managed IT services include:
● Network and server support
● IT support management
● Computer repair and maintenance
● Remote and on-site support
● Information and cybersecurity services
We’ll provide you with a tailored service package at the right price for your budget. To learn more, contact our IT experts today.