Executive Summary
- When the COVID-19 pandemic engulfed the globe in early 2020, nobody could have predicted the wide-ranging changes it would usher in — for our personal lives and businesses.
- If you run or manage a business, you’ll already know how much change the pandemic has created in your business, but what about the way your IT team supports users, manages security, and provides a reliable service even for remote colleagues?
- IT support teams across the UK (and the globe) have had to adapt. In many cases, this has actually made our working lives easier. In this article, we look at just how IT support specifically has changed.
Introduction
Remember February 2020?
If you’re like many business owners and managers in the UK, chances are that your company looked very different back then.
The global pandemic didn’t just change the way we live our personal lives, but it fundamentally shifted the way we work — and that extends to companies’ IT support too. In fact, with the almost overnight move to working-from-home, IT was one area which has seen the most change over the last couple of years.
With that in mind, let’s drill down into the detail and discover exactly how the pandemic has changed the way we do IT support forever.
Change #1: A new approach to “in-person” IT support
One of the most immediate shifts for many IT support departments and Managed Support Providers alike during the pandemic (and since) was the approach to in-person troubleshooting and IT problem-solving.
Naturally, when you have a team who is in-house, it’s easier to have someone walk over to an affected machine and take care of the problem there and then. But back when half the country was working from home? Those had to be done another way. It’s here that IT support services like ours really came into their own.
Of course, we’d already fine-tuned the art of delivering remote tech support via phone and digital channels, so adapting the way we delivered this support to a work-from-home context was fairly straightforward for the Get Support team.
Change #2: Adapted stress testing strategies
Consider for a moment just how much UK company’s technology footprint changed almost overnight back in March 2020.
One day, the vast majority of people were at their desks, in the office, from 9am until 5pm – or thereabouts. They were connected to the local server, enjoying all of the benefits of a robust cybersecurity system, firewall, and enterprise-level anti-virus, and more. The next day, they were at home, on a laptop, on their home broadband connection, and almost every member of staff was remotely connecting to the server or at least working with digital company assets.
IT support departments spend a lot of time, often as part of disaster recovery planning, stress-testing in-house systems to account for company growth, cyberattacks, and other unforeseen events – but who could foresee an overnight switch to remote working? Because of this, many IT support departments in 2021 and beyond have adjusted the way they do system stress testing to ensure that any on-premises systems, like servers, can support a fully remote workforce. Beyond this, they’ve also had to consider training and employee education to ensure staff are protected from potential cyberattacks stemming from outside of the local business network.
Change #3: Accelerated adoption of digital technologies
Even before the pandemic, it was clear that the world was headed towards a digital-first future.
From customer interactions to delivery of essential employee support, this type of digital transformation was on a fairly steady trajectory prior to March 2020 – and an almost exponential one after it. The reason was one of necessity: if companies wanted to survive a “lockdown” economy, they had to tailor their services – and their employee support – to the digital mindset.
According to research carried out by management consultancy firm McKinsey, the global average leap for digital adoption acceleration was three years. In certain places of the globe, like the Asia-Pacific region, this acceleration was even faster, serving up a jump of four years vs where were pre-pandemic.
Change #4: A renewed focus on cyber security
While having a distributed workforce via the hybrid working model is something many businesses have adapted to by 2021, it didn’t come easy.
One of the biggest risk factors during the height of the pandemic and the work-from-home migration was cyber security. After all, web-based scammers didn’t take time off just because of a global superbug; instead, they doubled-down, knowing that people were potentially more susceptible to scams and cyber attacks in the home setting.
In addition to the risk posed by staff using their own home networks, businesses themselves seemed to take a while to really adapt to the change. According to the Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2021, put together by the UK government, only 35% of businesses deployed security monitoring tools during the pandemic. Even worse, just 32% were monitoring user activity at all – increasing the risk of successful cyberattacks.
Despite the lack of action during the pandemic, these stats also show that 77% of businesses now recognise that cyber security is a high priority for them. That’s something that bears out in our own experience with tools such as Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR), which is the type of cyber security platform which is well-suited to a flexible hybrid working model.
Change #5: Fresh investment in IT hardware
One of the major responsibilities of any IT support department is to issue, monitor, and manage company hardware. Whether this is laptops or desktops, the process is often the same, but it all had to change when the global pandemic hit.
Prior to March 2020, companies would have usually reviewed their IT hardware requirements every 5 years or so. Using a service like our very own “IT Director”, UK businesses can build out a roadmap which includes a prediction for upcoming IT hardware requirements and costs. But, again, with the unpredictability of the pandemic, the sudden need to furnish employees with hardware suited to work-from-home setups was keenly felt.
In the early days, lots of companies might have chosen to quickly deploy a BYOD policy to allow staff to use their own home computers for work purposes. But, as the pandemic has progressed and it’s become clear that hybrid working might be the future, hardware needs have been revisited. Now, many IT support teams are focused on deploying laptops across their hardware fleets, giving staff the flexibility to work from wherever they feel most comfortable.
Need an IT support company to help you survive and thrive?
At Get Support, we’ve been delivering reliable, professional IT support services to small and medium-sized businesses across the UK for over 20 years.
That means that, for us, the pandemic was an opportunity to help guide and advise our clients on the rapid changes we’ve covered in this article. As we head towards 2022, our team is better prepared than ever to deliver on-site, remote, or hybrid support for UK businesses up and down the country.
To learn more about our managed IT services, just give us a call today on 01865 594 000 — or simply fill in the short form below.
