Welcome to Nerds On Site. We’ve been serving small businesses since we opened our doors way back in 1995. In this post, we’re going to cover what you need to know about handling your tech for a small business and if you should consider hiring an in-house IT team, handling things personally, or looking to hire IT professionals like the Nerds On Site for continued support.
Article Contents
Before we get into the article, check out our Business IT Solutions if you’re looking for immediate support for your business. We’re an IT company with a nationwide presence and offer onsite services for all businesses in almost all North American major cities.
I’m a Small Business Owner – Should I do it myself?
Well, that depends. Are you a nerd?
The first thing to consider is, are you always at your business, and if you aren’t, are you comfortable taking tech support calls when you’re away?
Doing it yourself will always be the cheapest way for a small business owner. Still, it may not be the best idea unless you have a strong IT knowledge of troubleshooting technical problems and security issues.
The first thing you want to consider when handling your tech support in-house is how comfortable are you with cyber security? The goalposts have been moving in the past ten years, with ransomware, phishing & malware growing at an alarming rate every single year.
Implement business-grade anti-virus & endpoint solutions, like Webroot or MalwareBytes for business.
Enforce Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) on everything.
Password managers like LastPass will save your cyber security and also your sanity. It’s around $5-8 per month per user, but once you get used to using a password manager, having unique passwords for everything you’ll never need to remember will make you feel fantastic.
Webroot also offers security awareness training; we highly recommend taking the course. Cybercriminals have become quite wise, so you’ll want to know the basics of defending yourself.
You can skip the above, but you’ll eventually need to look into disaster recovery services, and they don’t come cheap.
Should I hire an in-house IT person?
We’ll never recommend you shouldn’t, but it’s not the most cost-effective way for small businesses to manage their IT.
According to indeed, the average IT Technician salary in the United States on 05/29/22 is $51,586 per year or $4,298 per month. This excludes insurance, holidays, and other staff-related costs.
As typical staff works 40 hours per week, you’ll be paying approximately $24.80 per available hour, with no coverage for 128 hours of the 168-hour workweek.
Through Nerds On Site as of 05/29/22, for a full-service managed services package for up to 10 employees, with multiple devices. Covering onsite service when needed, unlimited 24/7/365 phone & remote support, managed servers, email, data backup, WiFi, devices, hardware normalization, security awareness training & Zero Trust cyber security, you’ll pay around $2500* per month, with no additional staff-related costs.
As it’s 24/7 coverage, you’ll be covered for 168 hours a week. This works out at $3.43 per hour or an 85% discount from a traditional single-person in-house team.
Of course, with the Nerds On Site package, you’ll get the full support of our entire knowledge base instead of being limited by the knowledge and availability of a single person. We have over 1,000 years of combined experience, and the average Nerd has been with us for over ten years.
*Top available managed services & cyber security package, including all services (as of 05/29/22). It varies depending on unique business needs.
Starting with a managed services package will allow you to never deal with IT services again, but we understand this may not be financially viable for some small businesses. You may want to look into different solutions like an IT help desk agreement with a managed service provider for your small business as it’s relatively cost-effective and paid per user. IT help desk services usually give you unlimited 24/7/365 phone & remote IT support and can typically resolve basic issues with the most common software.
What comes in Managed Services for small businesses?
For ease of use, I will break down the package described above. This will mean that you’ll receive specialized support services 24/7/365, and outside of reporting active issues that aren’t monitored, you’ll never have to deal with IT ever again.
24/7/365 IT Help Desk Support Team (Located in the United States)
A dedicated phone line for your small business will provide phone or remote tech support for any IT issues that your small business is having. From simple questions to configuration & computer issues.
On-Demand Onsite Tech Support (North America)
If you have an issue that cannot be solved remotely, we’ll mobilize our small business onsite support team to take care of your issue. As we will be monitoring your devices & servers, we often know about critical issues before you. We can mobilize our support team to take care of the issue and avoid business downtime quickly.
Managed & Monitored Devices
Devices will be secured with Webroot Evasion Shield & monitored for suspicious activity & downtime. Pending security updates will be reviewed & automatically implemented when proved safe.
Managed Email
Email solutions through Google GSuite or Microsoft O365 will be set up & secured.
Managed Data Backup
Cloud-based or on-site backups will be set up, secured, regularly tested & monitored, with failover & redundancy.
Managed WiFi
Dual (for redundancy) business-grade networking hardware is provided and replaced if needed at no cost to your small business. Complete lockdown against internal and external network threats.
Service Level Agreement (99.999%)
Our IT company will guarantee virtually no downtime for your small business through its technology.
Device Procurement & Setup
If you decide to upgrade a device, we’ll acquire it with our discounted rates, set up the device (depending on your small business’s policies), and send it to your employees. (Hardware not included).
Security Awareness Training
Our 100-point deployment checklist for our cyber security product, the SME Edge, includes extensive training on how to spot and handle cyber threats for critical employees.
Zero Trust Networking
The only known complete defense against ransomware & phishing. Artificial Intelligence-driven allow & block listing that automatically secures anyone on your network.
We currently protect over 2 million devices with our Zero Trust networking, and we’ve never had a single successful ransomware event.
Conclusion
It’s going to be easier for you as a small business owner to understand the benefits of having managed IT services when you’ve had managed IT services. Never having to deal with IT again will give you more time to focus on your customers and revenue-generating activities.
The biggest factor is cyber security, it can seem like an unnecessary cost if you’ve never had a cyber event, the unfortunate fact is that almost all small businesses fail within one year of a ransomware event. The worst part of this is it isn’t the ransomware cost that will be the leading factor in a small business closing, it’s usually the loss of data, or worse, loss of reputation when customer data gets leaked onto the darknet.
As always, we appreciate you taking the time to read our most recent article, and, if we can help with your Business IT Solutions, don’t hesitate to contact us.
