Digitalization is ubiquitous these days. If your business is not online, it may not exist. In the highly competitive market, even non-tech products should provide high-class online service to keep up.
Yet, finding quality IT support can be challenging for small businesses. The limited budget and lack of tech knowledge are the main impediments to small business advancement. So how can small businesses get qualified tech support, which will boost their metrics?
In this post, I’ll give you some tips on that. With more than 10 years in IT business development, I clearly understand the business needs of different types of companies. I’ll happily share with you what it takes to:
- Get quality IT support for small businesses;
- Choose an IT development company with limited resources;
- What kind of IT services are a good fit for small businesses?
So, if you’re a small business seeking expert IT support, pick a notebook and brace yourself for valuable tips!
What is Tech Support for Small Businesses?
When talking about small business IT support, what are we talking about?
IT support for small businesses is the services that IT companies provide to small businesses. Such services usually include:
- Consultation Services: Advising small businesses on the correct type of technology to implement based on their needs and budget.
- Managed IT Services: Offering regular maintenance, monitoring, and support for IT infrastructure, ensuring everything runs smoothly.
- Cloud Services: Helping businesses transition to the cloud, offering services like cloud storage, cloud backup, and cloud-based applications.
- Hardware and Software Procurement: Assisting businesses in selecting, purchasing, and installing the right hardware and software.
- Data Backup and Recovery: Implementing backup solutions and offering disaster recovery services to protect against data loss.
- Custom Software Development: Creating custom applications or software tailored to the business's specific needs.
- Mobile App Development: Designing and developing mobile apps to extend business services or for internal purposes.
- IT Auditing: Evaluating a company's IT systems, practices, and operations to identify inefficiencies or vulnerabilities.
The type of small business IT services will differ depending on the future and current business needs. So, before starting your vendor search, take some time to figure out your needs and expectations.
When Do Small Businesses Need Outsourcing Tech Support?
According to statistics, the IT outsourcing market size grew from $1250 billion in 2022 to $1364 billion in 2023. Only this number says a lot about how effective IT outsourcing is for small businesses.
But how to understand if IT outsourcing is good for your business in particular?
To help you acknowledge your business needs and decide whether IT services will work for you, I’ve sorted out a list of cases, when small business tech support is the best choice for small businesses.
Startup Phase
I know how it feels when you have a fantastic idea but have a limited budget. In such cases, small businesses might need help to hire a development team in-house, as employment takes a lot of resources.
IT outsourcing can be your lifesaver at this point. By outsourcing, you get professional IT support companies for small business that can also advise on product development.
For one, Uptech always aspires to provide added value for clients. Our support goes beyond the classic pack of IT services (software development, testing, and design). Having a mole experience working with startups and launching products ourselves, we know all things product development. Besides providing solid software development, we also help our clients:
- Find product-market fit;
- Define the features users need;
- Build an authentic user-centered design that reflects the app’s tone.
Being close to your users is incredibly important when starting your business. We know how to transform user interviews into user-centered app flows that make people stay with you for a long.
Growth and Scaling
You know a famous saying that only 90% of startups fail. Yes, but once your product catches on with users, you will get to the point where your business will expand. Then, it might need more robust systems, cloud services, or tools to manage increased customer or transactional data.
Performance Issues
If computers start running slowly, software crashes frequently, or there are recurrent network downtimes, it's a sign that professional small business IT solutions are needed.
At Uptech, we care a lot about the performance of the software we build. We strive for a "perfect" version, and so far, we have been pretty good at it. For example, on one of our long-term projects, Aspiration, we achieved and kept 99% free sessions! Why not 100%? Well, it is hardly possible. Why? Learn in our blog article How Uptech Keeps 99% Crash-Free Sessions On Aspiration App?
Need for Specific Expertise
Sometimes you need something special. You might need IT help with cybersecurity or want to make a smooth AI integration into your existing app. But unfortunately, you can’t find the right specialist to tackle the problem.
We’re excited to inform you that IT outsourcing can offer you numerous qualified talents in particular domains, industries, or programming languages. With IT support, small businesses can fill in the “hole” in their professional team once it occurs and terminate their collaboration once the problem is solved. No need for employment obligations or overspending – you’re as flexible as you want!
Rapidly Evolving Technology
As technology advances, staying up to date with emerging tools and software requires specific knowledge. Outsourcing tech support ensures that your business can address technical issues with the latest technology.
Limited Budget
The pain for all small businesses looking for IT support is a limited budget. In this case, hiring quality people on your team is challenging, as employment involves many obligations and spending.
IT outsourcing is a cost-effective instrument for small businesses, as it allows them to find the needed professionals, cooperate with them as long as they need it, and stop this collaboration when the need has expired.
What Type of Tech Services Do Small Businesses Need?
We have already shortly reviewed the types of IT services for small businesses. Now let’s take a closer look at each one, so you can make an informed decision whether you need it.
Software Development
If you’re set on bringing your business online, you might want to consider software development. Customized software development can significantly boost your business by streamlining operations, automating tasks, and reducing manual intervention, saving time and resources.
By building tailored websites, we always ensure that every feature is justified and serves the purposes of businesses. Such an analytical approach will save you a lot of time and budget while helping you to build an effective business.
To learn more about software product development services, check out website.
Mobile App Development
If you want to reach bigger audiences, mobile app development is the right way to do it. According to statistics, more than 50% of internet traffic comes from mobile devices. So, if you’re set on bringing your business online, ensure you have a mobile app with a convenient user flow.
Besides the comfy shopping perk that mobile apps provide, this is also a fantastic channel for getting to know your audience better through collected data and communication instruments.
Last but not least, mobile apps can serve as an additional revenue source through in-app purchases, ads, or premium features.
At Uptech, we acknowledge how important mobile app development is for businesses. So we always use a solid tech stack to ensure impeccable app performance.
Managed IT Services
For small businesses, managed IT services can be a beneficial step to take, as it solves the problem of the tech background shortage. Despite being a non-tech professional, an IT project manager should have a sufficient understanding of how tech works.
Professional IT management companies guarantee timely and quality project delivery. Communication, fixing requirements, planning, and risk management are only a few of an IT project manager's processes in his daily work.
From Uptech experience, we have many cases when proper planning and risk management have saved money for our clients and enabled them to fit into limited budgets for development. Like in the case of Denim (insert the link to the point when it's published), where under a limited budget and timeline, we managed to build the must-have features and created nice-to-have features that expanded the app's functionality.
Digital Transformation Consulting
Digital transformation is a buzzword these days, and it’s not surprising. If you want to reach bigger audiences, you should go online. But what is essential is not just to go online. But to develop a proper feature set and tech stack that will match your business needs.
This is where tech support for small businesses comes in handy. A professional tech team can develop a tech stack, integrations, and APIs tailored to your business needs. IT consulting can introduce companies to new technologies or methodologies they might have yet to be aware of.
How Can Small Businesses Choose a Reliable Tech Support Provider?
Enough with the theory! Let’s switch to practice. So how for small businesses to find a reliable IT support provider?
Firstly, do your homework
Before plunging into the search, take your time to decide what your needs are. What are the problems you're expecting to solve through outsourcing? What's essential for you: clear communication, tech expertise, similarity, or values at work? And finally, are you aiming at a website or a mobile app solution?
Before embarking on the search, it's imperative to identify and articulate your specific needs. What problems are you aiming to solve with this software? What functionalities are essential? Will it be a web-based solution, a mobile application, or something else? Documenting these requirements upfront will simplify your search and ensure you engage with providers who can genuinely meet your needs.
Conduct Thorough Research
Now start your search! There are a variety of ways you can go here:
- Turn to your peers for recommendations;
- Check online platforms like Clutch or GoodFirms;
- Make sure to check reviews and testimonials.
The key is not to stay stuck on ratings – seek out providers with experience in projects similar to yours.
Check Websites
Once you’ve sorted out your favorites among companies providing IT support for small businesses, it is time to delve deeper into their portfolios. Usually, companies showcase their work on their website, like we do on our Work page.
This is an excellent opportunity for you to review the company’s previous experience, see if it’s familiar with what you’re looking for, and book a call with a Sales/Business Manager to ask questions about your business.
Look at Business Compatibility
While technical skills are vital, never underestimate the value of cultural and business alignment. Project collaboration is typically more harmonious and productive if a provider shares similar values and work ethics.
Put Your Expectations Straight
When choosing a provider, make your requirements and expectations clear to the potential IT provider. Timeline, project requirements, design, etc – all the details should be discussed during the contracting process. You can expect the proper IT support for your small business by clearing everything up at the start.
How can Uptech help small businesses with IT support?
Suppose you’ve already checked our website and Work page. In that case, you can see that Uptech has broad experience working with different types of businesses, from big enterprises to small businesses seeking IT support.
In our portfolios, you can find such small business cases as OBD Genie, Angler AI, and Eatable, that turned to us for tech expertise and management services.
We know what small businesses look out for in their tech partners, and we always make sure to provide it:
- Tech expertise: you can be confident about your code – we have you all covered!
- IT management: while you focus on your business development, we handle IT management transparently and clearly communicate.
- Flexibility: things are changeable in business, and small ones are not an exclusion here. We constantly adapt the processes to the changing timelines and budgets to deliver the end product perfectly.
Since 2016, Uptech has provided IT support for small businesses, startups, and big enterprises. That said, we also build innovative products ourselves in our R&D team. So we are totally on the entrepreneur side, knowing exactly what they are going through at every stage of business development.
With this business-in-mind approach, we manage to provide tech support for small businesses that boost their user acquisition and retention metrics.
Conclusion
For small businesses, IT support is no less critical than for startups and big enterprises. The lack of tech expertise and limited budget are always key drivers for small companies seeking tech support from qualified partners.
Outsourcing IT services is a go-to option for small businesses who want to fill the gaps. Yet, the software providers’ qualifications, domain expertise, and experience in working with small companies matter a lot.
Again, to find IT support for your business, clear your expectations. Book a call with our Sales Manager and discuss your requirements to get the IT support you need.