Blog: Solutions for Your Top 5 IT Issues of 2020

Some IT issues are inevitable, but many are actually preventable or mitigable. In a year of so many new business challenges, it’s important to tackle your IT issues first to better support your organization in the fast-approaching new year. Before getting to the solutions, let’s quickly recap the top five IT issues we’ve seen in 2020.

The Issues

Smaller Budgets

Many businesses are strapped for cash right now. The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically impacted the economy, and firms are under pressure to maintain or trim costs, leaving little room to spend on larger business initiatives. In fact, a recent Gartner forecast projected that worldwide IT spending in 2020 will decline by 7.3 percent from 2019. IT teams will need to find creative ways around their tighter budgets. 

Stagnant Growth

As a result of budget constraints and overall economic uncertainty, organizations are finding it difficult to strategize for growth. The need for scalable options is obvious, but the choices are overwhelmingly endless, and many can be costly to implement. 

Supply Chain Hurdles

Businesses have had to completely alter the ways they operate, and processes that were once seamless and easy are now disrupted. Supply chain, for example, was rapidly disjointed in the wake of the pandemic. Where and how product is shipped and handled from warehouse to the store shelves, or directly to the customers’ homes, has had to be reshaped. Many aspects of business besides supply chain—internal and external—will need to be re-examined and possibly overhauled.

Distributed Workforce 

The large-scale shift to remote work resulted in an initially chaotic workplace transition for many individuals. As the dust settles, many are continuing to work from home and actually prefer it. In a recent September poll, Gallup found that 33 percent of U.S. workers are always working remotely, and 35 percent of those who have worked remotely would prefer to continue to do so. Businesses have been able to better cater to remote workers over the past few months, but there is still more to be done to keep users better supported and connected. 

Security Issues

Lack of oversight of devices and networks has resulted in a significant increase in security threats and breaches. The latest Cybersecurity Report Card by DomainTools found that “60 percent of organizations detected a moderate to a dramatic increase in cyber attacks during and following the pandemic”. The more off-premise endpoint devices being used, the higher the chance of a security breach. In fact, an IDC study reported that 70 percent of successful breaches were due to endpoints. Managing this issue is likely overwhelming to many IT departments. 

The Solutions

Device as a Service (DaaS)

This subscription-based solution actually hits all five of the 2020 issues. Cost optimization and adaptability are possibly the most important of the benefits DaaS can offer to businesses. DaaS allows businesses to pay for what they use now and scale for what they will need in the future. This provides the opportunity to business leaders to shift their expenditures from capital to operational, freeing up their budgets for more strategic, long-term investments.

Connective Technology (5G & Wi-Fi 6)

To keep users seamlessly connected anywhere and anytime, faster speeds and lower latency is a must. This can be achieved easily through 5G and Wi-Fi 6 technology. 5G next-generation mobile networks use more channels across radio spectrum frequencies, offering speeds similar to hardwired fiber-optic connections delivered wirelessly. Wi-Fi 6 adds a third 6GHz band to the existing 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands used by current Wi-Fi devices, increasing spectrum to improve connectivity. All in all, faster connections and greater bandwidth can improve business efficiency as well as the remote work experience for your users. 

Collaboration Platforms

Across an organization, whether fully remote or a hybrid of remote and in-office, your organization now depends on digital collaboration more than ever before. Luckily, there are many platforms out there that can help, but leveraging ones that are cross functional can be smoother and more intuitive for your users. We recommend using Microsoft Teams at the core of how your organization communicates and works together. Offering chat, video conferencing, voice collaboration, and OneDrive cloud-based sharing across the Microsoft 365 suite of applications, your users can work together intuitively, wherever they have internet connection. Think of it this way, if collaboration opens the door to productivity, then Microsoft is the key that unlocks it. 

Service Desk

Accessible, proactive, and painless IT support looks very different in a remote and hybrid setting. Your users are no longer able to just stop by the IT office or request a technician to swing over and check out a problem. In having limited person-to-person contact, your users can benefit from the availability of a wide net of remote support options (phone, chat, and online portal). CompuCom’s Service Desk offers this while supporting a wide range of technology, including desktop, mobile, peripheral, or ‘Bring your Own Device’ (BYOD). Our 24/7/365 remote support specialists quickly triage and diagnose issues, wherever your employees are working from, at home or in the office. 

Endpoint Management 

Security risks are simply just more difficult for your IT team to manage and mitigate remotely. Endpoint management is a great place to start in better securing your remote or hybrid organization. It’s the process an organization uses to detect, provision, deploy, update, and troubleshoot its endpoint devices. Your endpoints are the internet-connected devices that send and receive communications (smartphones, laptops, desktops). Our endpoint management solutions pair Intel and Microsoft capabilities to help create a secure, collaborative, and seamless system. 

Stay Connected with CompuCom and Microsoft 

The new year is around the corner, so now is the time to get this year’s IT issues resolved and out of the way. We offer a wide range of IT solutions and services focused on business adaptability. From platforms and strategies catered to keeping your users connected, collaborative, and productive, to user-centric support and a holistic endpoint management solution, we can help solve your top 5 IT issues this year, and as a Microsoft Gold Surface Partner we can do even more. 

As a longtime Microsoft channel partner we successfully offer simple, dependable, and uninterrupted access to the technology and support your business needs, covering the implementation, management, and support of collaboration platforms, like Microsoft 365, Microsoft Teams, and Microsoft Azure.