Should I Choose Reactive or Proactive IT?

Companies heavily rely on technology to support daily operations and drive growth, innovation and efficiency. However, an IT issue can financially and reputationally set your business back.

That’s why reactive and proactive IT are crucial to reducing risks in a company’s IT infrastructure. But what’s the difference between the two? Are there any pros and cons? How do you know which one you should implement? Let’s find out.

Read: 5 Risks of Not Going Proactive with Your IT

Reactive IT

Reactive IT, or break-fix IT, was the only IT support available for a long time. This solution-based support fixes problems after or as they occur, whether a server crashes, a cyber attack occurs or an employee accidentally deletes an important file.

Once an IT disaster occurs, the company sends a ticket to its IT support. The IT personnel will then fix the problem.

However, several problems come with reactive IT:

• Your company experiences downtime waiting for the IT personnel to arrive and evaluate the problem, especially if they don’t know your IT infrastructure; it can sometimes take hours, if not days, to fix the issue
• While experiencing downtime, you are losing productivity, frustrating staff and sacrificing your customers’ happiness
• The time spent waiting for the problem to be fixed can actually exacerbate it – if you’ve been hacked, waiting can give the cyber criminal more time to wreak havoc on your IT infrastructure
• Unless your IT support is your internal IT team, you won’t experience ongoing support, maintenance, protection or planning

The biggest problem with reactive IT is that it doesn’t solve the issue at heart – the short-term solution means the same issue can arise again and again, needing to be fixed each time.

The upside to reactive IT is that you’re only billed for the time spent fixing the problem, which can be cheap if you don’t have many problems. However, if you constantly and unpredictably have issues or need expensive replacements, you might want to consider proactive IT.

Proactive IT

Proactive IT, or managed IT services, is all about prevention and maintaining a healthy IT infrastructure. With this support system, the belief is that prevention is better than the cure; it’s cheaper to prevent technology failure in advance than to clean up a mess afterward.

Proactive IT uses continuous, advanced monitoring and management to identify and stop problems in the first place, sometimes before you even notice. It can also stop issues from spreading throughout your system or growing in severity.

The first part of implementing a proactive IT strategy is a risk assessment of your company’s IT infrastructure to identify vulnerabilities, such as access points, outdated technology or incompetent staff. From here, the IT team can provide long-term solutions to prevent future emergencies and crises and improve existing IT systems. More importantly, these solutions stop the problems from repeating themselves repeatedly.

Since proactive IT is all about preventative measures, it comes with regular updates and patches to hardware and software to avoid cyber attacks and equipment failures. Updated cybersecurity compliance, robust disaster recovery plans and security measures, including anti-malware and anti-virus programs, are also included.

Many benefits come with a proactive IT approach:

• You get more out of your existing system
• You can develop long-term plans for business growth and performance
• You enhance your customer experience and reputation, beating out the competition
• You can tailor technology solutions to meet your specific needs
• You increase your company’s operational efficiency and productivity
• You can implement automation to free up employees from doing boring, redundant tasks
• You improve user experience with smooth IT operations
• You don’t experience downtime

You also receive strategic planning to align your IT budget and IT roadmap with your company’s goals and easily adapt to the changing technology environment and its trends.

Read: 3 Questions Every Business Leader Should Ask About IT

How Do I Choose?

When deciding between reactive and proactive IT, the first consideration should be money. As mentioned before, reactive IT can be cheap if you don’t have expensive or numerous IT issues. Proactive IT is usually offered on a fixed monthly basis, which means you always know what you are paying for and won’t be blindsided by costs.

The other considerable factor is the IT staff. If you can afford it, having your own internal IT team is great, but it’s often expensive and not worth the time, money and resources put into setting the team up. That’s why many companies go with a trusted managed service provider like Thriveon.

These providers take on all your support tickets (and stress), freeing up whatever internal IT you have to focus on your business. Another benefit to an MSP is that you can access a broad range of certified technology experts without having them directly on your payroll; these professionals know the IT world inside and out, so you don’t have to.

Read: Internal vs. Outsourced: 5 Reasons You Should Outsource Your IT

Thriveon and Proactive IT

Since 2005, Thriveon has been building a better way to do proactive IT. We offer strategic managed IT services that drive business growth and reduce repetitive IT issues. Our one-stop solution for all your IT needs means you can spend less and free up your employees to accomplish more.

Schedule a consultation today and find out how our managed IT solutions can help you grow.

Download: Proactive eBook