One of the most crucial components to any modern and successful business is a robust and efficient IT system. If you want to stay ahead of your competitors and encourage more customers and clients to choose your company over your rivals, you need to make effective use of high-performance technology that can evolve and adapt as you expand and grow. If you don’t, your rivals are likely to take advantage of this.
Just as it is important to make the right choices about which IT systems that will help you meet your business goals best; it is also important to make sure this technology is used effectively and safely. That means, in addition to robust and efficient IT systems, you need an IT support services team in place to monitor and maintain it, dealing with any repairs, upgrades and adjustments that are necessary.
Some companies prefer to have their own in-house IT support team in place and if you are a brand-new business and on a tight budget, that may make some sense. However, as you expand and grow and your customer and client base increases, so too will your IT system.
Increased Productivity
As noted at the outset, you may have trained individuals who have experience dealing with IT systems and can solve problems as part of your workforce. However, if they are spending more time solving the issues of your computer network or dealing with viruses, software upgrades and any other problem you can think of that would affect your IT systems, it could be taking them away from what you originally hired them to do. Which, in turn, will lead to a loss in productivity.
If you outsource your IT systems support needs to a company that specialises in this kind of work, you free up employees who are potentially juggling too many roles. That way, your IT systems can continue to be monitored and maintained, while your staff handle their own roles. When there are problems, members of your team can speak directly to the IT support services team, rather than disrupting projects and ongoing work.
Significant Return on Your Investment
It will cost roughly the same for your business to pay for the services of an outsourced IT support team as it would to hire a small dedicated in-house team. However, an outsourced team offers you the benefit of greater resources. They often have more fully qualified and skilled IT professionals at their disposal and are knowledgeable about the most up to date and cutting-edge IT systems and solutions available. You will also find that most are better acquainted and more keenly aware of the latest cyber threats, including viruses, ransomware, and malware.
When you choose the right IT support services team, the difference between outsourcing and keeping it in-house is like night and day.
Avoid Potential Security Breaches
Following nicely from the above, we want to expand the point about cybercrime and security issues. Cybercriminals, like the technology they are looking to exploit, manipulate and hack into, are constantly evolving their tactics, techniques, and strategies. The only real way you stand a chance of ensuring your business’s IT systems stay fully protected from nefarious attacks and security breaches in whatever form they make take is by investing in reliable IT support services.
As noted, they are constantly educating themselves on the methods currently employed by hackers and cybercriminals and the most effective defences against them.
They can also help to educate your staff on how to work safely, especially when logged into your network or the internet. As part of ongoing support, they will constantly monitor your processes and systems and identify and assist in correcting any weaknesses.
Efficiency
We already noted that hiring a specialist IT support services team can improve the productivity, in general, of your workforce, by freeing them up to concentrate on the roles and duties they were hired for originally. Not only will they be able to make more productive use of their time, but they will also be able to offer a greater level of efficiency. So too, though, will the team handling the care of your IT systems.
They will be able to make sure your company is following industry regulations and standards, while also ensuring the technology is used and maintained correctly, preventing, or at least reducing any potential downtime.
Access to a Better Variety of Expert
When you hire a dedicated team offering IT support services, you obviously get the benefit of individuals who can fully concentrate on maintaining your IT systems. Further to that, though, you potentially get the support and assistance of a team with greater knowledge and experience of working in different industries.
Their employees may regularly obtain new certifications and stay fully abreast with developments in the industry, giving them a deeper level of expertise. A nice bonus is that, because you have outsourced their services and their employees are not on your payroll, you are not responsible for covering the cost of their education and training. Whereas with an in-house team, you would be.
Safe and Effective Utilisation of Cloud-Based Services
Have you been on the fence about moving to cloud-based platforms for some or all your business’s operations? Understandably, you are worried about the potential security breaches that exist. However, it is becoming harder and harder for forward-moving companies to work successfully at a high level without using cloud-based platforms somewhere along the way.
This is particularly the case if you have remote workers or anyone who accesses accounts or websites from mobile and handheld devices.
When you invest in the services of an IT support team, however, they will help you to move to a suitable cloud-based platform safely and will help to monitor and maintain it moving forward.
Improved Uptime Management
For all IT systems to work as efficiently as possible while avoiding unnecessary downtime, they need to be regularly updated. The best course of action, as updating software, hardware and entire systems can often lead to downtime, is to have it done out of normal office hours. If you continue to use an in-house IT support team, this could mean you have to fork out for expensive overtime.
However, if you outsource your IT support services, you will get the benefit of a team of skilled and experienced professionals who can perform the appropriate updates and system checks at the least
disruptive time for you and your staff. This will help keep additional costs down while maintaining a consistent uptime. Although not guaranteed, your company’s uptime may also be increased.
Opportunity to Reinvest in Your Business More Regularly
It may be hard for you to budget for future endeavours, whether it’s workforce expansions, more offices or new products and services. Particularly if a lot of your expenses are being spent on training your in-house IT support service team (or the employees whose dual responsibilities include maintaining and monitoring your IT systems).
As we’ve already noted, an outsourced IT support team are responsible for the training and education of their own workers. The money you save from not having to pay for specialist IT training and certification for your staff, as well as the money you could save from having your IT systems regularly monitored for issues to correct these before they are huge and expensive issues, could be put to good use.
It means you can invest in that new office space, a larger workforce, more computers or the development and introduction of new services or products or better branding and marketing strategies.
Gives You a Serious Edge Over Your Competitors
Last, but not least, when you invest in the services of a dedicated IT systems support team, you can leverage your business better against rival companies. For example, many of your customers and clients are likely to be concerned about the increase in prevalence and sophistication of cybercrime, in whatever form it takes.
When you outsource your IT support services from another company and can offer customers the assurance that their data and devices are safe using your websites, portals and systems, they are more likely to want to do business with you or work with you. Especially compared to a rival company that may be trying to cut corners and save some cents by keeping everything in-house yet struggling to do so.
As you can see, it is not just important to have the latest and best IT systems in place to keep your company relevant and on top of its game, you need to look after those systems. Rather than taking on the bulk of the responsibility yourself or delegating it to your already busy workforce, it is much more effective to outsource.
An outsourced IT support team will be more skilled, experienced and better equipped to ensure your computers, networks and all systems, both physical and cloud-based, are working efficiently and effectively enough, allowing you to concentrate on what you and your team do best – growing and expanding your business.
