The importance for a NGO to have it provider as a Technology Partner

IT technologies facilitate businesses to add impetus to their innovation agendas. For an NGO, the addition of technology can assist them to operate more efficiently and enhance their processes. In return, their credibility with their supporters and donor can get a huge boost as they quicken their progress for their initiatives of social change. Therefore, an NGO must actively seek the services of an IT provider. The perfect IT provider can be the game-changer due to the following reasons.

Hardware and OS

To “computerize” its operations, first of all, an NGO requires the use of hardware. Now hardware may be widely available in the market for purchase but only IT professionals have the technical expertise to acquire the best equipment at the lowest possible prices, resulting in maximum utilization of NGO’s budget.

Aside from the hardware, there has to be an OS that can power the systems. The right OS can be either a Linux distribution or a Windows Server OS, depending upon the exact tasks required from a server and the structure and activities of an NGO.

Backup

For every organization, a time comes when it is hit by an unforeseen disaster such as a cyberattack, which may render its systems useless. In such times of crisis, smart businesses have a contingency plan in the form of “backups” which forms the core of their disaster recovery programs.

Backups are the complete duplication of an organization’s data which are then stored separately, away from the main systems. These backups can be stored in different devices like USB drives, portable drives, etc. However, the proper backup strategy can only be designed by an IT provider who can determine whether your NGO is better off with an offsite, onsite, or even a cloud backup plan. Likewise, they can also schedule regular backups for a weekly or fortnightly interval and fully manage them.

Backups are often neglected because they are not needed instantly. However, in times of crisis, they can be the difference in saving your NGO from losing its years of hard work. For example, this year business in Scotland—Arran Brewery—was involved in a cyberattack which made it lose over 3 months of its crucial sales data.

Licensing

After setting up your hardware and OS, NGOs require the use of certain software to do their work for them. Often such software comes with a high fee for licensing etc. Sometimes, a single license may not work for another system in the same network. Failure to comply with licensing related issues result in fines and penalties.

Training

After every box is ticked in the IT infrastructure of the NGO, the management may think that its work is complete. However, they are missing a key point. There has to be someone who can operate these on a daily basis. Whether, it is staff members who would have to work on the email systems, manage social media platforms, or administer the database, all of these job roles require some level of training to effectively execute their tasks. Hence, in such cases, professionals from an IT provider can be great allies for helping the employees optimize their IT use.

Do you have an NGO? Are you searching for an IT provider as a technology partner? Contact Tecbound so we can have a discussion about it. We have extensive experience in transforming traditional NGOs into modern ones with our IT touch!