IT Outsourcing
Outsourcing services makes a lot of sense if you are a small to mid-sized business. One may have the capital, but lack the physical resources (e.g. office space, hardware) to hire in-house personnel. Lots of services can be outsourced by a business – from telecommunications to marketing, but one of the biggest outsourcing trends of the recent years lies with IT Support. For example, Business IT Support London Solutions have become one of the top services London-based businesses are outsourcing, and other regions of the UK are following suite.
But why are so many businesses adopting the outsourced IT model? Technology is so a crucial part of business in today’s climate, that insufficient investment in IT for business processes can actually be detrimental to the business. This doesn’t mean that a business must place a costly investment in IT. This is precisely why outsourcing IT services is so popular: It is cost effective, and it keeps your business abreast of current technological developments in business.
It’s less work for the customer
Say you are a small to mid-sized business wanting to build an in-house IT team. First of all, you will need to go through the process of hiring and training your technicians. To have an effective IT team, you will need at least one first-line technician to cover common IT queries – and the bigger your business is, the more first-liners you will need. On top of your first line, at the very least, you should have some specialist technicians – if your company uses cloud computing, for example, you will benefit from having a cloud architect on hand. All in all, the work can easily build up when hiring IT staff. Then, once you have your IT team together, you have all the HR obligations of managing the department – arranging cover for sick leave or holidays, processing payroll, etc.
If you have outsourced your IT services, the responsibility of managing technicians, the HR obligations, will reside with your provider. You can get all the benefits of an experienced IT team for a fraction of the cost if it were in-house.
The quality of service is better
Your IT service provider will have better resources to maintain a large team of experienced personnel. It is in their best interest to offer plenty of training for their staff to make sure the skills and knowledge at play are up-to-date. As well as this, an IT service provider will always be up to date on the latest technology available to its customers – again as it is in the best interest to offer the most cutting edge solutions. As stated earlier, an effective IT team should include specialists – such as cloud architects or project managers – to provide support for the more complex IT queries or personalized services.
If you require access to extended hours for support, or even 24/7 access; an IT service provider is the most likely place you will get this. They may even have a workforce spread across several continents, to make sure there are always active technicians around the clock.
The service is scalable
If you are a small business, outsourced IT support is the ideal solution. However, if your company grows, there will come a point where simple IT support is not cost effective, and you will require further technology solutions to ensure your business is running efficiently. At this point, you would look at Managed IT Services. Managed IT Services is the model of outsourcing the maintenance of IT processes and functions – which may involve server hosting and support; software licensing and ongoing support; and implementing cyber security such as firewalls, disaster recovery and backup. These are just a few services, on top of full IT support, that you can get with a managed IT service provider.
This model is generally better suited to businesses on the larger end of the SMB and SME spectrum. But partnering with a company that provides both outsourced IT support and managed IT services may be advisable – as the transition from one service to the other will be much easier with the same provider.
These are just a few of the ways in which outsourcing IT services is highly beneficial to your business. To sum it up, it removes the pressure of maintaining your IT infrastructure. IT permeates nearly every aspect of your business, and it is certainly a full time job managing it. So don’t put extra time and resources from your business into your IT when you can have it managed for you, for a fraction of the in-house costs.
