Prevent Downtime by Planning Your Network Maintenances

Because you manage a business, we don't have to convince you of the benefits of planning ahead. For example, having an onboarding strategy in place for hiring a new employee will get them acclimated more quickly, which will help them contribute to boosting your bottom line faster. Similarly, planning your IT network maintenances will benefit your organization.

The Importance of Timely PC Maintenances
Every PC user needs to keep their software up to date. For businesses, upgrading software isn't an option. Upgrades are necessary to keep your system protected from the latest online threats. If you're not scheduling your upgrades, then you're likely doing it randomly.

Perhaps you only perform an upgrade when a popup window shows up reminding you to perform the task. This popup may get you to upgrade, or you may click on "Remind Me Later" and put it off. Or worse, you may click on "Don't Display This Again" and forget to upgrade entirely, which can put your company's sensitive data at serious risk.

How Upgrading without a Plan can Cause Downtime
If you do get around to updating your software, it may be a significant upgrade that will require you to restart your system. Additionally, sometimes an update to an OS will be annoying about giving you the option to restart your computer later. You've likely experienced this when you've upgraded your Windows OS in the middle of an important project and gotten annoyed with a popup Window bugging you about rebooting. In this scenario, you click on "Restart Later," only to have that annoying box show up again fifteen minutes later and derail your train of thought.

Eventually, you cave to the demands of the annoying popup box, close out your project, close all of your other open applications, and then restart your computer. Because you're anxious to get back to the project, you just sit there waiting for the machine to reboot; an unwelcomed break. When the PC is rebooted and the update is installed, you now have to reopen all of your applications, including the one you were working on. Now you have to find your place on the project and wrestle with your thoughts to regain focus.

This inefficient upgrading process is called downtime, and when this process is multiplied by however many workstations you have, along with every mission critical application that needs a regular upgrade, then you're looking at a significant amount of downtown that can be avoided if you just plan your upgrades.

How Preferred Plans and Implements Computer Maintenances for You
With managed IT services from Preferred, we plan out software updates for your business in order to eliminate this lengthy downtime scenario that we just described. With our solution, we're able to remotely manage your IT infrastructure and handle many of the mundane maintenance tasks that often go overlooked, such as software updates. Our managed IT service gives us an overview in regards to which applications need updates, and this assessment allows for us to quickly perform the needed updates so that you're not hit with any surprises. As a bonus, having Preferred take care of your updates will give you peace of mind that your system is current and protected from the latest viruses and exploits.

We're able to avoid having maintenances like updates cause downtime by taking care of them during off hours. This frees up your company's bandwidth and network so that you can use network resources solely for getting work done. When you go home for the night, our technicians go to work to remotely perform updates and maintenances on your IT infrastructure, which allow you to show up the next morning with your workstations ready for another full work day (without experiencing lag from updates or annoying popup windows).

Planning and outsourcing your company's computer maintenances is a sure way to get ahead of downtime issues, and when Preferred manages these maintenances, you can rest assured that no maintenance task will be overlooked and your system will run optimally. Planning your organization's IT service package will do wonders in preventing downtime, and we can plan out more than just IT maintenances. Everything related to IT can be planned out for your company's benefit, from equipment purchases, mobile device strategies, network security measures, and much more. Call Preferred at 708-781-7110 to make plans with us, for us to make plans for you!