As an IT manager, you are the person responsible for keeping the company’s computational infrastructure running. You are also the first person to receive complaints when this structure does not operate in a stable or satisfactory manner. And those complaints arrive quickly.
Technology plays a central role in the operation of any company and, therefore, several sectors become dependent on it to work. Dependent on your ability to keep IT in order. To achieve this, IT preventive maintenance is the most efficient strategy. Understand better how this maintenance can be organized by following our post today.
What are the advantages of IT preventive maintenance?
There are two types of IT maintenance: preventive and corrective. However, the first type is the most advantageous. Prevention ensures that potential problems are detected before any real damage is done to equipment and systems.
The second type, focused on repairs, is the correction made after damage has already appeared. Because of this difference, by investing in preventive maintenance, you can keep your company’s IT infrastructure running smoothly at all times.
Another factor to be considered is cost. As an IT manager, you need to manage the budget spent on both prevention and repair actions carried out in your department. This includes evaluating which of the two has the best cost-benefit ratio.
It may seem, at first glance, that preventive maintenance involves a greater financial burden. After all, it involves regular periodic work – unlike corrective maintenance, which is done only when a problem occurs.
However, compared to the cost of productivity and revenue lost when teams cannot work due to an IT problem, preventive maintenance is financially more viable for the business.
This is the point you must argue to defend the implementation of this maintenance in your department.
How should preventive maintenance be carried out?
Prevention seeks to keep equipment and systems working correctly, minimizing wear and failures and avoiding risks. Preventive maintenance will help ensure that you do not need corrective measures, nor a contingency plan (although having one is still essential).
To this end, operating systems and software are updated to the latest version, antivirus software is updated and checked, disk cleanup and defragmentation are performed, and backups are made, among other procedures.
We will not go into technical details, which you certainly know very well. But it is worth highlighting some aspects of organizing this procedure.
First of all, you do not need to allocate internal employees to perform preventive maintenance. The most practical alternative is to outsource this work. Thus, your IT team can dedicate themselves to more strategic and priority activities.
Some preventive maintenance activities are quick and can be carried out within the company itself, while others will require more time and perhaps your equipment will need to be temporarily removed.
In addition to performing technical procedures, the outsourced preventive maintenance team can also observe your company’s practices and collaborate with important suggestions on how to use the machines on a day-to-day basis to preserve them in the best possible way. However, this service is more related to an IT consultancy.
As we have already mentioned, IT preventive maintenance must be carried out periodically. For this, an optimized calendar must be created. Depending on your company’s profile, the required frequency and the best dates to perform maintenance will vary.
It is important that the team hired for this work makes a good assessment before establishing the schedule for the services. Otherwise, you may end up paying for more visits than necessary – or, even worse, not receiving enough visits to keep your IT infrastructure well-maintained.
Bonus: Complete guide to implementing a Service Desk in your company
How to choose a team to perform maintenance?
As you can see, preventive maintenance is a long-term service provided. Therefore, when hiring a team for this work, you must be aware of the costs involved, especially regarding labor and necessary materials.
Also remember that if you need an emergency repair, this will probably not be considered part of the prevention service. Therefore, this service will certainly be charged separately as corrective maintenance.
You need to pay close attention to IT problems that arise after hiring a team for preventive maintenance.
If, even with this service, the need for repairs is not close to zero, it is obvious that your investment is not bringing results. In fact, this is a case where there is a loss – since you will end up paying for prevention and also for correction.
If this happens, try to identify the cause of the problem. Was preventive maintenance not performed correctly, or is there misuse of equipment or systems by your own team?
In addition to evaluating costs, you also need to have firm quality criteria to choose the team that will perform preventive maintenance. They must have experience, technical knowledge, and work in a transparent and objective manner. Look for professionals who have good references from other clients.
You, as an IT manager, can personally monitor the work of the maintenance team closely. If your work schedule does not allow it, delegate this monitoring to someone on your team.
Do not stop monitoring the execution of maintenance under any circumstances. It is essential to ensure that they are being done according to the calendar and parameters defined when hiring the service.
Who needs IT preventive maintenance?
No matter the size of the company you work for, everyone needs preventive maintenance.
Even micro and small businesses need this service. The smaller the company, the lower its ability to handle an IT infrastructure problem without losses.
For example, in a company that does not have many resources, if a computer stops working, it is likely that there is no other machine to replace it. Thus, work will remain stopped until the problem is solved.
Large companies also need preventive maintenance. Although they are able to replace equipment and pay for system recovery, this type of procedure has a much higher cost than preventing problems.
Thus, for these companies, doing prevention is a way to reduce IT costs. As an IT manager, you have an important mission: to raise the company’s awareness of the advantages of preventive maintenance.
In addition, you must lead the planning for its implementation and maintain consistent monitoring of execution. The operation of all other sectors depends on your engagement in this activity.
We want to know your opinion. Do you already perform IT preventive maintenance? What are the problems that this practice helps to avoid? Tell us by leaving a comment on this post.
