Upgrade Your Old Computers
Why NOW is the Right Time

How is your business doing in the current climate? Some businesses are completely closed. Others are seeing a downturn in trade. Business will bounce back once government restrictions have eased. The bounce back may be slow or you may find yourself inundated with work. Or you may have tight deadlines despite the many weeks of restricted working.

Is your IT going to handle a sudden influx of work? Or will you and your team be struggling with old, slow and inefficient computers? If you think that your business will bounce back fast. Or you’re going to have a rush of work that needs completing as soon as you can get it done. It might be time to update and upgrade your IT hardware to make sure that you and your staff are able to meet the demands.

Your Employees Are Not Working at Peak Efficiency with Old Hardware

With staff working from home, are you getting complaints about speed, or reliability? Does it take a long time to get simple jobs done, do they keep losing connection? Will your staff be able to continue working like that in the long run? Will they be able to keep up with workload once your demand increases?

Many businesses rushed to get their staff working from home in March 2020. Some smaller businesses had to make do and mend to keep the business running. In the long term this attitude will not sustain the business. Older and ineffective hardware is prone to problems and hardware failure.

You could replace your old equipment now while you’re quiet. While your business is not busy you could upgrade your old computers. You can make your staff staff happy, efficient and productive. Most important you’ll be able to keep up with the increasing workload.

Nobody knows what the exit from lockdown will look like. It’s likely to involve a long period of social distancing measures in one form or another. A certain amount of home working is likely to become a part of the “new normal”.

Being able to adapt fast to changes in regulations and guidance will be important. New equipment and latest software, keeping your business operating through these changing times.

Get Ahead of the Potential Second COVID-19 Wave

A second UK lockdown is likely. I hope I am wrong but I don’t think so. To reduce the hit on your business of a second lockdown it is important to learn the lessons from this one.

Use cloud services for emails, document sharing, and video conferencing. It will make it far simpler to keep your staff working and your business running as close to normal as possible. But none of this will help much if the computers that your people are using are old, slow or not fit for purpose.

Remember a lot of people are working from home on PCs that were never designed for business use. Replacing these with laptops will enable your people to work from home. When this is all over it also gives them a new fast machine to bring to the office when they return.

Reviewing and upgrading your computers now will ease the transition to normality. If a second wave of lockdown measures does happen acting now will help protect your business. It will help people working from home to remain productive as business starts to improve. It will also avoid the inevitable rush of inquiries that we expect to come when things do start to improve. As demand increases and supply chains suffer, prices will rise.

New Hardware for Permanent Flexible Working

COVID-19 has had a massive effect on the way that we work, with a move to working from home. It raised the question of why this was not done before lockdown? With fast wireless internet and cloud technology it has been an option for a long time.

Having the infrastructure in place to work from home could help your company. You can stay productive and switch from working in the office to working at home as the needs arise. Need to stay home to look after the kids? Work from home. Need to wait in for a delivery? Work from home. Need to self-quarantine? Work from home. Flexibility will place your business ahead of the pack in our fast-changing world.

Is now the time to upgrade computers?

If your business is in a good position now and particularly unaffected by the pandemic. Or a business able to expand operations during this time. You should consider updating any computers which are slow or unreliable. Also consider looking a few months into the future and get ahead of any supply issues or price rises.

If business is suffering but you see demand when lockdown eases replace any old IT equipment. Slow, unreliable computers will not help you when it gets busy in the future months.

If your business is most affected by the pandemic it might not be the time for investment in new PCs. Do consider what is best for your business in the long term. Replacing old computers is not a miracle cure for economic downturn! If you must work from home, technology is most definitely your biggest ally. Investment in the right tools can help your business be more efficient and flexible.

Staying ahead in a changing world

New standards emerge all the time. Adopting these standards is a business investment to keep you ahead. Before the pandemic forced flexible working. Remote working, and new faster methods of communication were already in use. Now is the right time to future proof your business. Use technology to give you the flexibility to adapt to almost any situation.

Upgrading your computer equipment and other hardware is an investment. Contact First Stop IT and see how we can help your business through the uncertainty of the pandemic.