Member Article

SMEs must consider the risk of IT failure

Businesses of all sizes are having to come to terms with an increasingly digital world, which has fundamentally changed customer behaviour and demands. In the always-on, connected world of today customers want to be able to bank, shop or do business at any time of the day, or night, from wherever they are. Therefore, brands which want to be in with a chance of winning customers’ loyalty are having to transform how they market their products and communicate with them.

Despite a sense of apprehension among some SMEs, investment in digital technology has been shown to have an overwhelmingly positive impact on the ultimate success of businesses. Last year Lloyd’s Bank published its UK Business Digital Index, which found that the most digitally savvy SMEs are also the most confident in their business. These same organisations also rated themselves as out-performing their own expectations.

However, this increased utilisation of technology also leads to greater reliance on it. If the IT infrastructure fails, then so too does everything that depends on it, which can lead to severe disruption of day-to-day operations and negatively impact on customers.

In spite of this, it appears that many SMEs are not doing enough to ensure their IT systems are safe and reliable. Research commissioned by Paessler last year found that almost half (42%) of small and medium sized businesses in the UK are not using an IT monitoring tool, which could help to detect and address IT problems before they result in downtime.

Without network monitoring, businesses are likely to end up addressing faults that could have easily been avoided. Last year’s research discovered that SMEs spend an average of 2.5 hours a week – more than a working day per month – fixing common network problems. This represents a huge waste of time and money, especially for a fledgling business that may not have much of either at such an early stage in its development.

As a business grows and hires more employees its network is under even more strain. This provides even more reason to keep tabs on how the IT infrastructure is performing. However, owners of growing SMEs are much more likely to be thinking about things such as marketing and cash flow than the health of their IT network.

Neglecting a company’s IT network can have serious repercussions if something goes wrong. In the case of Uber, for instance, hundreds of taxi drivers protested against the company last year. When thousands of people visited Uber’s website for additional information, the company’s systems buckled under the weight of a sudden increase in traffic. Effective use of an IT monitoring tool could have let the system administrators know that the network was under pressure, and provided them with the time to plan accordingly.

There is no way for SMEs to completely mitigate the risks of IT failure. But by employing a network monitoring tool, it becomes easier to spot weaknesses in a system and work out how to address vulnerabilities. Perhaps the biggest risk of IT failure for small businesses is the potential reputational harm, which could lead to customers losing faith in the company. A network monitoring tool helps to pre-empt such problems before employees, customers or clients are affected. In this way it helps business owners to develop a stable, productive and ultimately prosperous enterprise.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Dirk Paessler .