6 Common Technology Problems Small Business Owners Face

With any business, knowing how to effectively utilize technology can drastically enhance operational efficiency and give your business a competitive advantage. However, small business owners often encounter several technological hurdles that impede productivity and growth. Today, we delve into six prevalent challenges facing small business owners and provide insights on overcoming each of them.

1. Failing to Meet Industry Compliance Requirements

Many industries have specific regulatory compliance requirements that define how companies must organize and protect data. Common examples you might be familiar with include HIPAA, which regulates electronic medical data in the healthcare industry; FFIEC, GLB and SEC in the financial services industry; and CMMC for companies that work directly or indirectly with the Department of Defense.

For a small business owner wearing multiple hats, it can be difficult to keep up with the latest compliance requirements, especially if you don’t have an IT or cybersecurity employee on staff. Missing a requirement cannot only lead to hefty fines and legal issues, but it can also incidentally leave you vulnerable to a cyberattack.

The best thing you can do is work with a managed services provider (MSP) that has experience in compliance for your specific industry. While compliance is not exactly the same as cybersecurity, the two overlap, and an experienced provider will be able to help you bridge the gap, so you’re protected and meeting any mandatory requirements.

Click here to get your business a network assessment so you’ll know if you’re currently missing any mandatory compliance requirements for your organization.

2. Lack of Strategic IT Planning

One of the biggest issues we see is a disjointed relationship between the business leaders in the organization and the IT team. In this digital age, technology is an integral part of how a business operates. When business leaders, who tend to see the larger picture, add in IT professionals, they can make informed decisions about what technology to deploy to make long-term growth and scalability easier and more efficient.

Several areas in which your IT team should act as a strategic advisor are:

• Optimizing business operations to streamline processes and improve productivity

• Selecting the best line of business software

• Upgrading outdated hardware and software

• Implementing cybersecurity best practices

• Deploying cost-effective and scalable cloud solutions

• Creating a predictable IT budget that doesn’t rely on break-fix solutions

3. Poor Cybersecurity Protection

Cyber threats become more advanced each year. Cybersecurity decisions should not be solely left to the IT department. These are business decisions that need to be made with the buy-in of the leadership team because failing to have a robust cybersecurity system and becoming the victim of a cyberattack can be detrimental to a business. There are trade secrets, confidential communications, customer data and employee records that are stored on your company’s devices that you can’t afford to have fall into the wrong hands.

     Work with your IT team to implement a three-part plan that includes:

• Prevention Strategies: Do you have the right software and solutions in place, such as antivirus, firewalls, MFA, etc., to protect your organization from an attack? Are you regularly training employees on the latest threats and how to identify them?

• Detection Mechanisms: This is a crucial piece that most small businesses neglect, which leaves them vulnerable. Do you have a process in place for detecting a breach, or would it go unnoticed until it’s a bigger problem? You should be conducting regular scans and monitoring, as well as employing endpoint detection and response tools.

• Response and Recovery Steps: Do you have a plan in place if something goes wrong? Would your employees know what to do? You need to have an IT team supporting you that can identify and mitigate any issues quickly before damage can’t be undone. Leaders in the organization should take this seriously.

4. Insufficient User Support

If your employees are struggling with their technology all day, productivity will decrease. Using slow, outdated devices and software can be frustrating for employees, leaving them feeling less motivated and hindering their output. It’s even worse when you have unreliable technical support following the “get to it when we get to it” approach.

With the right IT team, whether that’s in-house staff, outsourced support or, more commonly, a combination of both, you can trust that an experienced technician with the tools and knowledge to quickly assist employees and solve problems will always be available to help.

5. Poor User Asset Management

Managing access to various levels of data for each employee can be tedious and overwhelming in larger organizations. IT professionals can take on the role of managing and monitoring user access so that no one has access to data they don’t need, security policies are enforced, and accounts are constantly monitored for irregularities.

They can also assign new users, make changes to existing accounts, delete accounts, add more users, set permissions on how employees can access the network and more. This is particularly important when it comes to offboarding employees. Whether the employee is leaving on good terms or not, removing data access from someone who has access to sensitive information can be risky and needs to be handled with care.

6. Lack of Training

As mentioned, making sure your employees know how to use technology efficiently is essential to productivity, but it’s also important for security reasons. All employees should regularly go through cybersecurity training t ensure they understand and are following best practices.

This is typically not the role of the business leaders in the company. More times than not, they need refresher courses, too. When you work with a reliable IT team, they’ll be able to regularly inform team members of new threats and what to look out for, run phishing simulations to test employees on whether they know what to do and more. One training session is not enough! To build a cybersecurity-focused culture, you need to be talking about it often.

Is it time to solve your IT problems once and for all?

We have your back. To get started, book a FREE, no-obligation Network Assessment call. We’ll review your systems to let you know how and where your organization can better utilize technology to grow.

To schedule your FREE call, please visit Contact - (go2itgroup.com) or call our office at 440-471-8210.