Itwerx is a service-disabled veteran-owned managed IT provider serving Seattle-area businesses, founded in 2005, and one of the most common gaps we see in a new client relationship is that the business owner has no reliable way to judge whether their existing IT is actually working, short of waiting for something to break.
How do you know your IT team is working well if you don’t know what they do? That is a real problem for small business leaders across every industry. There are three simple tests that reveal a lot more than they seem to.
Test one: ask for the asset list
Ask for a current list of every asset in your environment. A team that has this under control should be able to produce it in short order. A blank look and a lot of mumbling is a real problem. The reasoning: if the management and monitoring tools in place cannot generate a current asset list in a few clicks, they are almost certainly not adequate for the many other functions that depend on knowing what is actually deployed.
Test two: pretend to lose a file
Pick a routine file that changes regularly, such as a daily report, and pretend it was deleted (in practice, just move it aside rather than actually deleting anything). Time how long it takes to be restored, and check how current the restored version is. This should be quick and simple. If a single file, or a single email, cannot be restored easily, the more important question is what happens when an entire system goes down.
Test three: unplug the internet
Arrive a little before normal office hours one day and unplug the internet connection for about fifteen minutes (timed before hours specifically so it does not interrupt overnight backups). Later, ask whether there have been any recent connectivity issues. Connections do drop occasionally, especially outside business hours when ISPs tend to run maintenance, but a competent IT team should still notice, and should mention being relieved when it came back. The internet connection matters for more than the obvious reasons, including external security monitoring and remote access for emergency response.
What a failed test does and does not mean
Failing one of these tests does not automatically mean your IT is bad, and there are plenty of other checks that could be run. It does mean there is a deficiency worth discussing with your team before it becomes a real problem rather than a hypothetical one.
Itwerx Corp is a service-disabled veteran-owned small business providing IT services across Seattle, Bellevue, Everett and Snohomish County. This is the kind of thing our managed IT services work deals with – talk to us about yours.
