As the IT landscape evolves, businesses now rely on their IT departments to drive innovation, ensure security, and maintain operational efficiency. By 2025, the role of IT has transformed into a strategic function, enabling organisations to navigate complex challenges and harness emerging technologies effectively. In today’s business landscape, technology is the backbone of operations, making robust IT support crucial for maintaining seamless workflows and avoiding expensive interruptions.
However, IT systems are not immune to problems, and even minor issues can snowball into significant challenges if not addressed properly. Understanding and addressing frequent IT support challenges can significantly reduce business expenses, save valuable time, and alleviate frustration.
In this article we will look at the most common IT issues that we see our clients facing today and how to support or mitigate these, whilst all the issues listed will resonate with you ultimately the resolution can be a complex process and CIO’s need to way up the cost of valuable internal IT resources being utilised to resolve these issues or to adapt a trusted Managed Service Partner to mitigate against these issues and focus on the overall operational efficiency of the core IT environment whilst enabling internal IT resources to deliver on the overall business goals and strategies.
9 common IT issues managed service providers handle
1. Slow Performance of Computers and Networks
This is the most frequent complaint we hear from our clients, this can be caused by various factors such as outdated hardware, insufficient memory (RAM), software conflicts, malware, or an overloaded network.
The resolutions listed below are simple but time consuming and consideration must be given to the capacity and ability of your own internal IT service desk continuously managing these issues:
· Enhance your hardware: Make sure your computers are equipped with sufficient memory and processing capabilities to handle the tasks at hand efficiently.
· Streamline Software: Remove unneeded programs and turn off startup applications that may hinder performance.
· Check for Malware: Run regular virus and malware scans to identify and remove harmful programs that can slow down your systems.
· Network Optimisation: Monitor network traffic to identify bottlenecks and overall performance, set rules for performance that may trigger the need to update equipment & links
2. Password related issues
This is the most common issue we see daily and the one that has the greatest impact as personnel are unable to work if they can’t access their computer/systems/applications. Implementing tools can mitigate against this issue and minimise the overall disruption to the business:
· Use a Password Manager: Generate strong, unique passwords for employees to minimise the risk of forgotten or weak passwords.
· Activate Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): Enhance security by adding an additional verification step.
· Schedule Regular Password Changes: Promote frequent password updates and set up automated reset systems to prevent lockouts and enhance security.
3. Internet
This is the most frustrating issue for personnel, slow or intermittent internet disrupts daily operations, affecting everything from email to cloud-based applications. So how can the IT helpdesk mitigate against these:
· Inspect Network Devices: Verify that routers, switches, and modems are operating correctly and replace old or malfunctioning hardware as required
· Monitor Bandwidth Usage: Implement bandwidth management to ensure that critical applications have sufficient resources and don’t slow down traffic on the network
· ISP Issues: ensure a robust SLA is in place with your ISP/Network provider and that proactive management of your connections is in place to ensure you are notified of outages or bandwidth constraints on your links.
4. Data Loss and Backup Failures
Data loss due to hardware failure, accidental deletion, malware attacks or backup failures can prove extremely costly for businesses. Mitigations to prevent this financial impact:
· Automate Backups: to ensure data is regularly and consistently backed up
· Cloud Backup: Adopt a cloud-based backup strategy for secure and off-site data storage thus reducing the overall risk of losing data due to on-premises hardware failures.
· Recovery Plans: Every organisation has one but are they tested regularly, ensure a schedule is in place to test backup and recovery plans to ensure they are fit for purpose and any issues can be addressed prior to having to invoke the actual plan.
5. Cloud Computing
As businesses increasingly migrate to cloud-based solutions, they often face issues related to cloud usage, security, and performance.
· Cloud Usage: Leverage cloud monitoring tools to oversee usage, enhance performance, and maintain cost-effectiveness.
· Security: Adapt strong access controls, encryption, and conduct regular security assessments to protect and ensure the integrity of your data stored in the cloud.
· Performance: Verify cloud service configurations to avoid performance issues or disruptions in operations.
6. Email Issues
The business community has adopted email as its main source of communication so resolving email issues quickly is a priority for most IT Service Desks. Problems with email can range from being unable to send or receive messages to excessive spam filtering. The following recommendations will help mitigate against email issues:
· Configure Email Clients Properly: Ensure that email clients are correctly configured with the proper SMTP/IMAP/POP3 settings.
· Spam Filters: Adjust spam filter settings to ensure that priority emails come through and that spam emails get sent to the spam folder avoiding unnecessary volumes of emails in your inbox.
· Email Servers: regularly check the status of your email servers to ensure they are current and know known issue exists.
7. Software Compatibility Issues
Incompatibility between different software applications can cause systems to crash or performance degradation especially when businesses run legacy software alongside modern applications. To mitigate against these issues:
· Regular Software Updates: Ensure that all software is regularly updated to at least N-1
· Testing: Never role out new software before testing its compatibility with existing systems this will avoid systems crashing/performing poorly.
· Virtualisation: For legacy software that may be incompatible with modern systems consider using virtualization to run the older software in a compatible environment.
8. Security Breaches and Malware Attacks
Security breaches and malware attacks are the one issue every business wants to avoid, they can severely impact a business by compromising sensitive data, disrupting operations, impacting the overall brand and can have financially crippling effects. At a minimum business need to deploy the following to mitigate against this ever occurring:
· Security Software: Use antivirus and anti-malware software to protect against security threats, ensure it is updated regularly.
· Training: Educate employees on cybersecurity best practices, such as recognising phishing attempts and using strong passwords, ensure as business you have policies around cybersecurity and robust processes for reporting any potential breaches
· Security Audits: Perform regular security audits to identify and remediate vulnerabilities in your systems.
9. Outdated Hardware
As technology advances, outdated hardware can become slow and obsolete whilst it is the intention of all organisations to see a return on the assets procured, incompatible, and reliance on old systems can significantly impact business operations and overall productivity. A hardware life cycle refresh program is essential to mitigate against hardware performance issues:
· Regular Hardware Upgrades: Based on OEM support define a schedule for upgrading or replacing hardware for e.g. computers, servers & networking equipment
· Cloud Computing: Consider moving to a cloud-based solution that facilitates natural scalability.
IT Support Response Times
Slow response times from your IT support team can lead to extended downtime, frustration, and loss of productivity for your employees. To avoid this, partner with a Managed Service Provider that offers proactive monitoring and management and can resolve issues before they escalate. In choosing the right Managed Service Provider for you consider the following:
· 24/7 Support: Ensure your IT support provider offers round-the-clock service to address critical issues anytime they arise. Narrow your preference to a service provider who offer a 24×7 follow the sun model ensuring that the service if fully manned regardless of the time.
· Communication: Establish clear communication channels and protocols for reporting issues to ensure that issues and request can be resolved quickly and effectively. Look for a service provider who can give you a full view of your account activity in real time ensuring you are kept up to date on all requests, the ability to do this will be influenced by the service providers choice of ITSM tool
· Agility: an IT managed service provider should act as an extension of your current IT service desk; they need to be as agile and supportive of your level of transformation to ensure continuity of service and delivery of business solutions
· Governance: A strong governance structure is key, it facilitates the overall management performance of the service, alignment to key business metrics and the delivery of operational efficiencies whilst ensuring operational performance. Operational governance should be delivered via two core mechanisms reporting and meetings.
Unlock Efficiency with Ergo’s Managed Services
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