Partnering with a Third Party for Remote IT Support: Benefits
There are many benefits that can be gained by partnering with a third party for your business’ IT support needs. Here are some of them.
Reduce Labor Costs
Senior management doesn’t want to deal with staff turnover, the cost of training and the impact the turnover has on ensuring consistent IT support to their internal customers. They rather focus on larger more impactful projects that drive business results. In addition, most businesses, large or small, have a complex IT infrastructure to support the growing need for a robust technology stack.
To be able to support such a large and complex IT infrastructure, many times it takes more than one person, or even a team of people with IT knowledge spanning workstations, networks, servers (on-premise or in the cloud), and security. Many small businesses can’t afford to hire that many resources. By partnering with a third party you can leverage their resource depth and knowledge at a affordable price that scales with your business.
Get Qualified and Experienced Professionals
If you are not IT trained, how do you assure an employee is qualified and experienced? Certifications like Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE), Cisco Certified Network Professional (CCNP) are crucial, but so is experience. No matter how much he/she trains, an in-house employee is limited to the environment he works on, the tools and apps he/she uses on daily basis. On the other hand, an outsourced team has more combined experience and sometimes can provide better solutions to your business’ IT problems, saving time and money.
Easily Adopt New Technologies
Partnering with the right IT support organization will have the necessary resources to start new projects right away. Handling the project in-house might involve weeks or months to hire the right people, train them, to provide the needed IT services.
Stay Focused on Your Business
Businesses have limited resources (budget, employees etc.) and every c-level employee has limited time and attention. Partnering could help your business by keeping its managers focused on growing the business basically removing the burden of analyzing and reporting to make informed IT decisions.
Control the IT Costs
Partnering basically allows you to convert fixed IT costs into variable costs because other than the contract that covers a set of recurring IT services, you basically pay for on-demand services.
Increase Efficiency
Organizations that try to do all IT support services internally can have much higher research, development, and implementation time, all these increase costs and are eventually passed on to customers.
Decrease the risk level
There is risk in any business – markets, competition, security, regulations, financial conditions, technologies etc., all change very quickly. IT outsourcing providers can manage much of this risk for you, with specific industry knowledge. Generally, they are much better at deciding how to minimize risk in their areas of expertise.
Act Big to get Big
From the business it support perspective, most small companies don’t have the internal resources to compete with larger companies. Partnering can help small businesses act “big” by giving them access to high-end technologies, and expertise that large organizations benefit from. Getting “it support as a service” (third-party IT support) can ensure the competitive advantage your company needs.
So,
Is your business software up to date? Do you monitor and audit your workstations and servers? Do you run simulated phishing attacks? Do you need help migrating from your Exchange server to Office 365?Do you have a cyber security plan? Do you provide cyber security awareness training for your employees?
Instead of wasting valuable time and money trying to learn all the technical details that a skilled IT support team already knows or trying to figure out what went wrong, it is much more cost-effective to outsource these services. Doing so allows business executives to focus on what they do best: business management.
