Why it pays to work with a trusted technology partner (and why Sainsburys, Tesco and McDonald’s might be finding a new one!)
As an SME it can be hard to know what to invest in and what to try and ‘do it yourself’. IT solutions can fall into the ‘do it yourself’ perspective or finding out at a crucial moment your IT provider doesn’t cover outages or didn’t do a full system review before working with you. Sainsburys, Tesco and McDonalds might be feeling that they didn’t fully review their suppliers but why does it pay to work with a trusted technology partner?
But what exactly happened to Sainsburys, Tesco and McDonalds?
McDonalds was the first to be affected last week. Customers reported that they were unable to order in-store or in-app orders weren’t being received. The BBC reported that it was a “global technology system outage, which was quickly identified and corrected,”. And, that it was “not directly caused by a cybersecurity event – rather, it was caused by a third-party provider during a configuration change”.
Sainsburys and Tesco were then hit – on the same day – with a system outage. Customers were left without deliveries despite orders being placed and in-store customers were only able to use cash. The BBC reported that Sainsburys “said an overnight software update was to blame and the issues had now been resolved.”
Can this happen to any business? And how do I avoid it?
Short answer? Yes, of course, this can happen to any business. This is where working with a trusted technology partner is beneficial. There are still humans involved in technology, despite the evolution of AI, and with humans involved there is always a risk of an error. But within our industry, there are best practice steps we can take to avoid issues like this occurring. This includes:
- Software testing before a major update is related
- Version control on software to add patches and updates where needed
- Hardware testing
- Monitoring and diagnostic tests
- Disaster recovery
And this is where finding the right approach to your technology is important for an SME. A partnership approach enables you to avoid the pain of trying to do IT yourself alongside the day job. But it is important to find the right partner. You want someone that will give you the support you need and that you can trust.
Trust has to be established and this can be done by a potential IT partner talking to you about their processes for launching new software, hardware and other technological solutions. You also want to know how they manage risk for your business. Think about asking about their customer satisfaction rating and testimonials as well (we have a 98% customer satisfaction rating).
Talk to EBS about how we can be your trusted technology partner
At EBS, we’re always happy to talk to SMEs about how we can help with IT solutions, cloud hosting, software development and more. Have a chat with us via our live chat, email hello@ebs.tech. Or find out more about us and our trusted suppliers at our complimentary technology event Thrive Together 2024.
