This list has been assembled from our own experiences as business owners, and feedback from our clients about their frustrations with their computer systems. How many of these apply to your business too?

Boosting Productivity

• You're tired of wasting time digging through reams and reams of spam every day – and paying your staff to do the same. You'd like the problem eliminated, providing the solution is reasonably priced and doesn't require any of your time to manage it.
• You always get stuck with the job of fixing computer problems yourself, so that your staff can work. This is a very common problem - many SMEs spend hours each week fixing mundane computer problems. You'd surely much rather spend that time on something more productive.
  
• Your business has had too much costly downtime recently, and you're tired of seeing your employees sit around while the computers are fixed. Plus it looks bad to your customers when you can't respond to them promptly, and blaming it on computer problems doesn't really help.
  
• To boost your own productivity, you want to work from home sometimes – whenever you need to concentrate on a complex and important task, you're better off working in a quiet location where you can focus and are less likely to be interrupted. Often the best solution is to stay at home and do the job – but you need access to your business I.T. systems in order to be productive.
  
• Plus, "teleworking" has the additional benefit of keeping your business operating in the event that your staff can't reach or use the office.
  
• You'd prefer that your staff couldn't install productivity-sapping software like games, instant messenger and so on. It's all but impossible to fully lock down a PC when people have physical access to the machine.
  
• There is a lot of manual admin work in some of your business processes and you've thought about whether you could boost productivity through software automation, but you have yet to find a good, cost-effective solution that suits your business.
  
• Your workforce is very mobile – you and your staff travel often and need to work from hotels, airports, customer's offices and elsewhere, both interstate and overseas. In the past you've regularly struck problems that drain productivity, such as: firewalls that block email sending, firewalls that block VPNs, connections dropping out while you download large emails, email servers that refuse to recognise you because you're connecting from a new location, lost or stolen laptops and more. You need an I.T. system that works just as well when you're on the road as it does when you're in the office.

Controlling Costs

• Your computer systems are aging and need to be replaced soon – but it's going to cost a bundle to buy new gear. You're considering a lease to minimise the impact on your cash flow, but are not looking forward to all the paperwork involved.
  
• Your business is going through rapid growth – and you need to scale up your I.T. systems equally fast as you grow, without tying up too much working capital on buying capacity well before you need it.
  
• Your business is very seasonal – you quickly ramp up your staff numbers with casual workers at peak times, then ramp down equally quickly. You could cut costs substantially if you had an I.T. system that could scale up and down with changes in staff levels.
  
• You are preparing to install a new server-based software application and the vendor has given you a shopping list of new hardware that they recommend you purchase. You know from experience that the new servers and disk array are over-spec for your needs and will likely run at no more than 5% utilisation – if only there was a more cost-efficient approach that would meet your needs and satisfy the software vendor.

Managing Risks

• You're worried about whether your data is backed up properly and whether you could get it back if you needed to. You've seen a few news stories about businesses that had to close down after losing all their data and in the back of your mind you are concerned that the same thing could happen to you. You haven't done a thorough recovery test for at least 6 months - if ever.
  
• Stories about poor tape backup practices being widespread - and the risks borne as a result - crop up in the media with disappointing regularity. While backup is unglamourous in the extreme, it remains a critical risk minimisation strategy that warrants far more focus than it typically receives.
  
• The possibility that your staff might install unlicensed software is a concern, since you know that the directors can be held liable if company computers are used. Recent news stories about businesses being fined for software piracy are a reminder that what you don't know CAN hurt you after all. You'd like an easy way to control the software that's used on your computers and ensure that your business remains compliant with your software licences.
  
• Your company regularly hires contractors who use their own laptops. You need to give them access to your network for them to do their job, but doing so risks introducing viruses or trojans if any of their laptops haven't been properly secured and maintained.
  
• You are concerned about the possibility of data theft by an employee, if one of your staff became disgruntled and decided to leave for a competitor. It would be all too easy for any one of your employees to slip a USB key into one of your PCs and copy the customer database onto it.
  
• At times you've thought about the amount of confidential company data that's stored on laptop hard disks, and how easily your company's reputation could be damaged if a laptop was lost or stolen with customer data on it. Why store confidential data on laptops in the first place? Perhaps just because it's a difficult practice to stamp out. The consequences can be amusing sometimes - at least when it's happening to someone else!
  
• Properly securing your data is a difficult problem to solve - you need a way to make it easier or, like most SMEs, you'll probably remain exposed to substantial risks.

Office & Environment

• The servers in your office generate too much noise – it gets very annoying after a while. High levels of ambient noise in the office can cause a number of problems including poor concentration and headaches.
  
• The servers in your office take up too much space – you are bursting at the seams as it is, and if you could get rid of that rack of computer gear you'd have room for an extra desk.
  
• The servers in your office generate too much heat – your electricity bill is higher because of the extra heat load on your air conditioning system from computer equipment. On hot days in summer your air conditioning system struggles to cope, and the temperature would be more comfortable without those servers also warming things up.
  
• You are moving to a new office soon – and the job of relocating all your computer systems without causing a lengthy period of downtime is looking complex and difficult. It's also likely to prove expensive, as the quotes come in for out-of-hours work by a specialist I.T. removals company and the consultants charged with getting it all back running again in the new office.
  
• Your business is going to open a branch office in another location soon – and you'll need to provide all the same I.T. resources for your staff in the branch office that you have in your main office. That can get expensive fast: not only do you have to purchase duplicates of all your existing systems, you'll also need to set up a communications link between the offices to keep the data synchronised at both locations.

Staff - Recruitment and Retention

• You want to attract and retain high-quality staff by offering them the option to work from home, at least some of the time. Flexibility in working hours and location is today the #1 job feature that will make a role more appealing to in-demand candidates and help you retain your best staff.
  
• In the current tight labour market, with skills shortages in so many areas, you want to access more high-quality candidates by expanding your recruitment pool to other cities and towns, perhaps even interstate. Strong candidates can often pick and choose at the moment, and may not be prepared to relocate for your role – you need a way to hire quality staff wherever you find them and enable them to work remotely if necessary.
  
• You'd like to make savings by hiring some staff outside the capital cities – in regional areas, where the cost of living and wages are both lower. To do that, you need an effective way for those staff to work remotely, together with your team in head office and elsewhere. This trend, known as "virtual commuting" is growing rapidly - if you ignore it you'll likely miss out on some excellent candidates.
  
• One of your key staff is going on maternity leave soon – but you can't afford to lose access to all her knowledge and expertise. She would like to keep working part time, which would be a great help to your business, but she'll need remote access from home as she can't travel in to your office.

Technical Support

• Your regular PC consultant is often unavailable, unreliable or inconsistent. Your business needs faster and more effective technical support than you've been receiving to date.
  
• You can't find a good PC consultant – the ones you've tried either aren't capable, aren't reliable, don't service your area or are too busy to take on new clients. Beyond just keeping your computers up & running, your dream is to find a consultant who can also provide advice on technology choices and strategy.
  
• Your PC consultant drops expensive "surprises" on you – he visits your office, does something to the computers that you don't understand and then gives you a large bill for his time. Even after asking him to explain, you're still confused about exactly what he did, whether you really needed to have it done and when you'll get the next expensive surprise…

I.T. Strategy

• You would like to use a Wiki as a collaboration tool for your team, but you aren't sure how to install a Wiki, which Wiki to choose or even where to start.

Start Eliminating Your I.T. Headaches Today

The I.T. on Tap service provides solutions to many of the I.T. challenges that SMEs face, including all of those listed above. Register now for a free, no obligation trial and within 60 seconds you'll see for yourself.