Why your business should consider Outsourcing IT

An outsourced IT partner can introduce flexibility over resource and cost to meet changing demand and can work either independently or alongside your in-house team to deliver transformational IT solutions to your business.

What Is Outsourcing?

Outsourcing is the business practice of hiring an external company for a planned or ‘existing’ activity that is or could be done internally. It is basically hiring another company to do some or all of a particular job that your business needs to get done.

How Does IT Outsourcing Work?

IT outsourcing works by partnering with an external IT company, which provides you IT solutions, maintenance and support from an IT helpdesk ensuring that you are always on top of things. Extending this to 24/7 support minimises downtime as critical issues, and updates can be dealt with outside of normal business hours when your own team may not be available. Outsourcing your IT is about finding the right partner not a supplier. They should work with you to understand your business and either deliver the service in full or work with your internal team to compliment what they do.

Benefits of IT Outsourcing

Working with an outsourced IT partner, even if you have an in-house IT team, should not be seen as a threat by your existing IT team, rather a positive to improve productivity and add another level of knowledge and expertise. Here are just some of the benefits of working with an outsourced IT partner.

1. Flexibility

IT partners can deliver a very flexible and customised experience to meet your specific and unique requirements. You can start with as much engagement as you require and change or alter your service any time you desire.

As your resources change, so may your needs from an outsourced IT partner. This flexibility in service allows you to take your time to recruit efficiently and fill any gaps in IT delivery, without the added stress of not having your immediate IT requirements met.

2. Cost Effectiveness

Partnering with an outsourced IT service is a cost-effective way to increase additional hands-on IT support and free up your business’s expensive resources. Your costly in-house IT team will have more time to focus on the bigger picture rather than on day-to-day IT support.

They can spend the saved time to better craft your business’s long-term IT strategy. Additionally, you can add additional high-end and more expensive resources on an ad-hoc basis whenever the need arises.

IT outsourcing will also allow you to use your IT partner’s monitoring and automation software to increase the overall productivity of your business and save you additional costs. Reducing business costs and resources is more important than ever since the global pandemic has taken effect.

COVID-19 has put enormous pressure on businesses and their resources. IT teams in specific are spending less and less time on strategic development and more time on support and maintenance, costing even more resources to businesses.

The pandemic has greatly increased the need and move toward remote working and the new normal of work from home seems like it is here to stay for the foreseeable future. This is changing the way many businesses are providing IT support to their users.

It has likely affected your IT support to users as well, which is why outsourcing IT support, like first line user entry level support, will enable you to easily control costs during these uncertain times.

Similarly, the flexibility in service that IT outsourcing offers will optimise overhead reduction during challenging economic times because you can change and tweak your service requirements whenever you need, effectively turning the tap up and down as you require. This will also allow you to optimise the use of your in-house team and reduce the challenge of managing your in-house resources to meet your requirements.

3. Coverage

An outsourced IT partner can help give back your internal IT team’s ownership to you. You will no longer solely rely on them for all your IT solutions and they will no longer solely manage and control your in-house environment.

This can help you take charge and utilise your in-house IT team to cover whatever element more key bases for your business. You will have the ability to outsource some of the more challenging aspects of IT support such as security to your outsourced IT partner.

You can also utilise your outsourced IT partner to give you extra support during peak times and reliable coverage during holiday periods when your business is short on staff. They can even take over 24/7 IT support so your in-house team will no longer need to cover this demand.

IT outsourcing can also be extremely helpful as an extra pair of eyes that bring new and wider perspective to you when you discuss your business’s IT strategy with them.

They are experienced and have the ability and industry-wide knowledge of solutions and applications that you or your in-house IT team may not have heard of before.

Conclusion

The challenges faced by businesses in these demanding and uncertain times can be overwhelming and create long lasting effects that hinder your business’s productivity and overall performance. IT outsourcing can help give you the flexibility, cost effectiveness and coverage your business needs.

Having an in-house IT department that is covering 24/7 IT support and maintenance is not the best use of your resources. Partner up with an outsourced IT service to better utilize your options in a cost-effective manner.

For more information on IT outsourcing and services, please visit our website today.