Each summer, many small and medium business owners take the risk of spending a few weeks without their key resources. Whether it's a system administrator, a person with expertise on specific applications or even an employee dedicated to the help desk, all have a vital role to play. Yet, when these resources are absent during the summer, everyone hopes that the infrastructure will not experience any problems to interrupt the normal flow of daily business services.
It is not for nothing that companies spend on average 70% of their IT budget to " keep the lights on." This is truly a daily requirement.
When management has no provisionary measures or a good Plan B in place, the result is an increased level of risk and possibly the use of expensive emergency interventions in case of a service interruption. Sometimes you have to call an employee who is on vacation, and even ask him to return to work to intervene and get the company up and running again.
Too often absences during the holidays are seen as a necessary evil, while there are solutions to reduce this risk and ensure your peace of mind.
1. Hire a temporary resource
If you're like many SMB owners, you may be thinking that it is not possible to find an IT resource replacement for only a few weeks, yet this is very feasible.
If certain skills are held by only a single person on staff, a temporary placement can be an excellent solution to replace this employee during vacations. This type of position is more frequent than what most executives think.
Firms like Present have access to highly skilled professionals who can be placed for short or long periods of time depending on the need to maintain your IT operations. By providing this replacement request only a few weeks in advance, you can have a qualified candidate within days. It would be a shame not to tap into this recruitment service!
2. The use of managed services
More and more businesses favor outsourcing the daily management of their IT infrastructures to avoid dedicating an internal resource to this activity.
With this service, there are no more holidays to plan for, because it is your provider that manages your IT and ensures that you have continuity in the daily management of operations.
Of course, if you plan to use managed services, this is a strategic decision and not a temporary solution for a few weeks.
Important
During holiday periods, it is above all the daily operations that must be maintained. Special projects can generally be put off until the return of the person responsible.
By using a temporary resource, you ensure that projects restart quickly when the manager returns from vacation. In this way, you have maintained the proper functioning of your operations and avoided any loss of time on initiating new projects upon their return.
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