Business resilience refers to an organisation’s ability to continue delivering products and services even during business disruptions. Basically, it determines whether you can continue business operations when you encounter issues you usually wouldn’t expect, such as cyberattacks, severe weather conditions, natural disasters, outages, and other unforeseen problems.

Needless to say, it’s one of the elements a business must improve upon. Unfortunately, it’s often easier said than done, especially if you’re currently in the process of growing. Nevertheless, if you plan to boost your business resilience, one of the best ways to go about it is to employ an information technology (IT) support agency, and here are four reasons why.

1. Improves your business’ ability to detect cyberattacks

Over the past few years, the cybersecurity threat landscape has grown drastically. The same technology that people use to protect digital assets is the same technology that threatens them. While there are countermeasures to such threats, the possibility of a breach will never be zero. And when a breach does occur, it can throw you off during business operations.

For that reason, experts advise businesses to have IT support, like Securelogic and similar agencies, on 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. Rather, you can focus on customer service.

This is one of the most recognisable ways IT support can boost business resilience. Furthermore, according to a study by Gartner, the average cost of downtime is USD$5,600 per minute. That would mean IT support can save you the money you’d otherwise lose during the few minutes after a cyberattack. (1)

2. Centralises your files for easy and quick access

Nowadays, an organisation can’t go without any digital files. Even mom-and-pop shops rely on digital assets to some extent. Perhaps the main difference is how each company handles files. For local businesses, it’s typically adequate to have files on one computer. But for enterprises like call centres, it’s crucial to have access to these files at all times if possible.

This is especially important for business resilience since you’ll likely need access to files to continue delivering products and services to customers even during disruptions. That’s what cloud computing is for—to centralise your files for easy and quick access. (2)

Businesses have already experienced this at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. Those who have already implemented cloud computing could transition to remote work almost immediately. Meanwhile, those who have yet to take the first step to cloud computing were left behind.

Needless to say, cloud computing is essential for business resilience. Unfortunately, not everyone knows or is an expert at setting up such a complex infrastructure. And this is where IT support comes in. By seeking 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 boost business resilience.

3. Prevents customers from getting left in the dark

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a type of system that contains various features, all of which are centred towards nurturing your relationship with your customers. These features may include the ability to follow up on past customers, respond to queries, store customers’ contact details, and record all activities with specific customers. But what does this have to do with business resilience? (3)

A CRM system allows you to engage in different functions to boost business resilience. Examples include the following:

• Extracts real-time data from past customer interactions and uses them to gain insights on how to improve your customer service even during unforeseen situations.
• Keeps customer contact information up to date and accessible, allowing your representatives to provide better and faster customer service, with or without business disruptions.
• Enables your reps to take over a customer request when an agent is unavailable due to emergencies and prevent them from dropping requests due to such scenarios. (3)

CRM systems can be incredibly powerful if used properly. But not everyone can realise the gains or benefits of such infrastructure simply by implementing the technology.

More often than not, you may fail to make full use of the CRM system. But with an IT support agency, you basically have a group of people who can support you all the way through its implementation. In other words, IT support allows you to maximise CRM infrastructures, which in turn boosts business resilience by minimising the likelihood of dropped customer requests.

4. Removes pressure from your staff

One of the main challenges of business resilience is having insufficient agents to deal with customer queries. This is what they call being short-staffed, and it can be detrimental to business operations even without disruptions. While it’s possible to resolve such issues by hiring a few more agents for your company, that often takes a lot of time to process.

However, it would be a completely different story if you utilised IT support agencies instead. By hiring an IT support agency, you’re effectively gaining access to the in-depth experience and knowledge of a group of talented individuals without going through the trouble of onboarding or recruitment. (4)

This not only lightens the burden of your HR staff, but you’re also reducing the pressure and responsibilities placed on your staff. This, in turn, can help with business resilience as your main staff can deal with core business operations rather than menial but time-consuming ones.

Examples of tasks that an IT support agency can take over include the following:

• Updating inventories
• Reviewing customer data
• Listing product information
• Creating invoices (4)

Wrapping up

Business resilience is one of those topics that are rarely touched upon by experts—perhaps because they’re busy with other aspects of a business. Or maybe business owners believe it’s not an essential part of business management. Regardless, if you want to grow your establishment, you’ll have to worry about improving business resilience at some point. And hiring an IT support agency would be an excellent way to go about it.

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 fast ways to increase employee productivity in the workplace”, Source: https://clockify.me/blog/productivity/increase-employee-productivity/