Business IT Solutions Top 10 Fundamentals

It’s imperative for many businesses out there to have a full proof IT plan in place. This can really make the difference in the overall practices as well as the efficiency in how your business is both managed and the work that is produced. Today, we have compiled our top 10 fundamental business IT solutions that you should be incorporating into your overall IT plan.

1) Backup

Starting with the basics you want to ensure that you have back-ups in place – one of the main focus points for example is a backup server. This can be local or remote based, allowing any data stored on your primary servers to be managed or restored.

It is good practice to have a system like this in place to ensure that data is never lost.

Similarly, removing critical single points of failure and ensuring that there are backups for these are essential – such as the internet. Only having one point for internet connection can result in a complete cease in productivity if this was to go out. So a backup is necessary to ensure work continues.

2) Antivirus

Making sure that every computer within your business is protected against viruses and scam bots is essential for every person, not just business. You want to ensure that you have protection against your emails too – as this is often where information about your business is shared.

At Netmatters we have a gold partnership with Vipre: an award winning cybersecurity, privacy, and data protection company, which means that we are on hand to help protect your business to the best of our abilities.

We also use ESET as our main port of call in protecting against viruses. As an “award-winning threat detection software” this ensures that everyone working at Netmatters is protected at all times. Incredibly important when part of an all-digital company, and something we recommend that all businesses take note of.

3) Carbon Footprint

As the world becomes more digitalised and business practices turn to more modern practices, remembering the environmental impact this is causing is a practical and responsible step to undertake. We all should examine our role in keeping the planet healthy, and managing your business's carbon footprint is a great place to start.

In March 2021 at Netmatters, we were proud to announce that we had become carbon neutral. We achieved this through a number of green initiatives, but when it came to IT we prioritised recycling old hardware and focussing on power efficient working.

4) Security Protocols

Setting up a security protocols plan is another basic step to ensure that your data is protected. This allows data to be delivered between two parties without the risk of it being shared unknowingly to outside parties.

Encrypting messages or emails that may contain sensitive information about you or those you have partnered with, is an important first protocol to put in place.

Access control is another area of importance – to make sure you are authenticating the user identity of your staff when accessing your business software. This can be done through updating passwords, or a two-factor authentication system.

5) Resilience and Redundancy

Redundancy is the duplication of components within your systems, increasing the overall system dependability.

Whereas, resilience is the practices in place to ensure that your systems can recover from a fault.

The use of resilience and redundancy ensures your system has a well-established tolerance to allow functionality when issues arise such as power outages or system overloads. So that your business can still operate even when a problem out of your control appears.

6) Location Independence

This term means that any data required to share with your employees – or potential clients, is accessible in any location. For example, allowing access to the cloud, so that employees who may be working remotely can access or save projects they are working on, to the same place. This allows information to be shared when necessary.

7) VoIP Phone System

At Netmatters we use a VoIP phone system as our main form of contact with everyone – from internal members of staff to contact our external clients. A VoIP phone system, simply put, means that a phone call can be made over the internet rather than a landline.

The benefits of this as you can imagine are exponential – especially with the rise of working from home, as this opens communication whilst removing the costs and complications that typically come with traditional landline options.

We offer our own telecoms system which you can find more about here.

8) Centralised management system

We have recently discussed the benefits that come with a centralised management system, with the use of the Microsoft Navision software. Our team are experts when it comes to implementing the Navision software into your business to allow all core processes of your company, from your financing process to other more internal business functions, to be managed in one easy software package.

Find out more about how a centralised management system is able to benefit you and your business in our recent article discussing this more in depth.

9) Disaster Recovery Plan

In the event of a rather dramatic disaster, such as a power outage or cyber-attack, ensuring you have a detailed and clear Disaster Recovery Plan is essential to minimize the damaging effects allowing operations to continue to run as smoothly as possible.

Without a plan in place, disruptions could potentially lead to a loss of productivity and therefore revenue, as well as dissatisfied customers.

A DR plan puts in a plan of action, including information in regards to backups – which we discussed earlier and how work can resume throughout.

10) Investment plan

Finally, an Investment Plan puts in place a clear understanding of what you as a company are trying to achieve within your use of IT. A good IT plan will document the effect of IT investments on overall profitability, the budgeting of IT needed per employee as well as the operating costs required.

This is the most important step to take before investing in the practices we have discussed within this article – to know what you as a business can afford to put in place, and examine what position you are in as a business at present.

The team here at Netmatters are experts when it comes to ensuring each step of our fundamentals are achieved. If you are looking for further guidance and support do not hesitate to reach out and get in touch with us today. We are always here to help you and your business progress!