When you have multiple business locations across a broad geographic footprint, there are significant IT challenges you must overcome. Businesses must address connectivity problems, rising costs, cybersecurity concerns, and more. Ultimately, your IT infrastructure becomes much more complex, but the experts at TPx are here to help you overcome these obstacles. Here are some of the top challenges businesses face when managing IT for more than one business location, as well as how a managed services provider like TPx can help.
Connectivity Concerns
When you have more than one service provider or different network designs, connectivity can be a significant problem. Sometimes, employees have trouble connecting with each other and partners. As a result, business can slow to a crawl. Consolidating network connectivity under a single provider with SD-WAN can help improve your internet connection and deliver faster speeds and more uptime.
Security Problems
Securing geographically disbursed locations can be difficult especially if you’re not using consistent security protocols for each business location. Inconsistencies can lead to vulnerabilities within your infrastructure and leave you at risk to threats, such as malware and phishing. Establishing a consistent cybersecurity strategy across business locations is paramount, but an effective security strategy should also consist of a defense-in-depth approach to keep your business secure across your technology environment.
Complex Operations
Many businesses struggle with managing complex operations with even one location. With multiple locations, you must figure out how to troubleshoot issues and provide updates in different areas. Additionally, you have to do so without introducing unnecessary delays. Working with a managed services provider can help simplify complexities within your infrastructure to streamline your operations.
The Ability to Scale
Every business location has different needs, your growth strategy will be different based on each location. Scaling your technology, therefore, has to accommodate the unique needs of each business location especially during an expansion project. At the same time, you need a sense of consistency regardless of the kind of scaling you’re doing, where it’s happening, and why you’ve decided to scale. By leveraging cloud-based technology, you have greater flexibility on scaling up or down your technology.
Consistent Data
When you have more than one location, you may have data in different formats that you have to unite under a single platform. It’s also common for each location to have unique backup needs. When it comes to ensuring continuity, each location has slightly different data availability needs if you want to keep the ship sailing smoothly when there’s an incident.
Managing Costs
Managing costs associated to a multiple location IT infrastructure can be complex. Without proper oversight or the right systems and vendors in place, discrepancies in spending may occur along with overbilling for technology because you’re not taking a holistic approach to your IT environment across locations. A managed services provider can help you save money on your IT budget while improving your overall operations.
Compliance Issues
Regulatory requirements, whether for the FTC, HIPAA, or another entity, can be difficult to adhere to without strict compliance protocols in place across your multiple business locations. While meeting existing regulatory requirements can be demanding, businesses must also be aware of new data privacy laws that are being passed by state and local entities. This means that requirements could be different depending on where your business locations are physically located. Meeting compliance in one area may require different IT infrastructure because of being in a different jurisdiction.
Collaboration Between Colleagues
You need a robust communications system to enable employees to collaborate as they wish. That is even more important when you have multiple business locations. Having a cloud-based system makes it easier to manage communications across various locations and enables your disbursed workforce to have access to collaboration tools. With proven technology, you can enhance your communications and collaboration within your business.
Allocating Resources
Each location is bound to need different resources. Sometimes, this involves the amount of bandwidth required for employees to connect to the internet. In other situations, you need to manage multiple site licenses for the software you use to run your operation. Working with a managed services provider helps ease the burden of allocating the right resources across your multiple business locations so that every location has exactly what they need to operate efficiently.
Downtime
No business wants to experience downtime, but when you have multiple business locations to consider, minimizing your risk of network downtime and disruptions becomes a little more complex. You need a coordinated strategy across your IT infrastructure, so if one location is impacted by a localized event such as natural disaster, power outage, or hardware failure, you have the right business continuity in place to minimize the impact and get the location back up and running quickly.
Use an MSP for Effective Multi-Location IT Operations
With a managed services provider (MSP), you get a team of experienced professionals to meet the demands of multi-location businesses. An MSP can set up an efficient, cost-effective, secure network that improves operations and communication between different locations. You can also use an MSP to secure your infrastructure and keep everything in line with compliance standards. Interested in learning more about how an MSP can help improve IT across your multiple business locations