4 Top Questions to Ask Your IT Company Before an Office Move

If you’re considering or have decided to make an office move, whether you’ve outgrown your old offices, or moving to gain access to a qualified workforce, you can’t afford any more IT downtime than absolutely necessary. Moving gives you the opportunity to review your network infrastructure. It also presents potential pitfalls in cost, equipment damage, and data loss. New Jersey IT support can help reduce risks and costs associated with moving your IT infrastructure. They can also help you create new, cost-effective, flexible infrastructure in your new office space.

What IT Infrastructure Will Our New Office Need?

Your office move can be an opportunity to upgrade your network and equipment. If you’re planning on hiring new staff and reorganizing, professional New Jersey IT Services are essential. In addition to moving your infrastructure and purchasing any necessary new equipment, the office move is a perfect opportunity to assess your current equipment and software and establish and execute upgrade plans.

Questions IT professionals will help you to ask and answer are:

• How much and which new hardware will your business need in the short-term, medium-term, and long-term?
• Which IT security needs does your business have?
• What data protection and preservation plans does your business have and what does it need?
• What is the physical layout of the new office space and how should the equipment be set up?
• What kind of network will best serve your business after moving?
• Do you have energy efficiency goals and how can your network support them?

Does Our Office Need New Jersey IT Support For Our Office Move?

When you’re moving existing IT infrastructure, what could go wrong? IT experts advise that before you undertake any move, even of a single home computer, you should back up your data. A few bumps and rattles along the way and you may not only experience hard drive damage, cables can come loose and internal cards may unseat themselves. Other problems that many people may not consider include static and magnets that sensitive equipment could be exposed to during the move, resulting in damage that can be difficult or even impossible to repair.

It’s unlikely that office movers have all of the packing material and equipment to duplicate the boxes your equipment originally came in and protection against damage from bumps, static, or magnets. IT professionals know how to pack, secure, and transport monitors, desktop computers, and cables.

How Can We Protect Our IT Investment While Moving Offices?

How many times have you reviewed your business insurance policy and a moving company’s insurance policy? Most moving companies have insurance policies which provide them with discretion to pay for repairs, replacement, or to make a cash settlement for any damages incurred during moving. IT companies have business insurance that offers them protection for the work they do in support of other businesses. Going without professional IT help during an office move could limit you to your own business liability insurance and the movers’ insurance, neither of which is set up to provide genuine replacement costs for damaged equipment.

You will also want to make sure that all of your data is backed up securely. No matter how carefully a move is planned and executed, you may run the risk of losing data. Look for IT professionals like Techsperts which use an enterprise-based backup solution and a secure cloud backup to safely store data. They will make an image of your complete IT system. This may not sound important, but all of the work your business does, including your CRM program data and ERP integrations are preserved by this type of data backup. Just saving data files won’t preserve your network and integrated programs the way combined cloud and enterprise backups and IT system images do.

How Long Will Our Downtime Be During An Office Move?

Relying on untrained office movers could result in additional hours and even days of IT downtime. Even one minute of downtime can cost your business anywhere from $926 to $17,244 according to IT industry studies. These costs factor in expenses for troubleshooting, data recovery, and lost productivity. Your business reputation and key performance metrics are at-risk also. Several days of downtime could seriously damage customer relationships as well as earnings projections.

You may avoid long periods of downtime during your move by relying on New Jersey IT services that can preserve your continuity of operations and keep your business operations going before, during, and after the move with as little downtime as possible. Using cloud-based services can help keep your business online during a move, just as they can help you to stay online in case of other IT interruptions including cybercrime, natural disasters, power outages, and equipment failures.