When considering outsourced IT, one of the biggest questions businesses face is “how would having support from an external provider benefit our business?” It’s a fair question but one which can be answered with a number of key points.
When IT is poorly maintained it can cost businesses a lot of time and money. Typically, Here at The PC Lounge we find that many businesses are frustrated with their IT and find it too complex, subsequently spending too much time trying to understand it.
Below are 8 key reasons why outsourcing IT support is an intelligent move for business.
Minimise the risk of making a wrong decision
We live IT, it’s what we do. Not every company has the luxury of time to invest in staff and hope they become IT experts. Dedicated staff and engineers know IT inside out and can provide the right answers to the right questions. If you consider, for example, “what is the best backup solution?” or “have we got the best setup?” are you willing to invest that time and money on the wrong call?
Keep technology up-to-date
Keeping your business operations up to date and on top of the latest technology can be time consuming. Whether it is from manually searching and running security updates, software updates, patches or backups, there is so much that needs to be constantly monitored and checked on in IT. Some of these updates may have to be done ad-hoc. Without that expert knowledge to advice, how do you know if your business is truly benefiting from the latest and most efficient technology?
Providing staff with a better quality of service
Your employees are working in the office as normal and they are carrying out their daily tasks and then suddenly your system goes down. Would it not be good to have the issue fixed quickly, even before you notice the problem happening?
Staff turnover levels
Employee turnover is inevitable for business. But what if turnover was faster than anticipated and all of a sudden the employee responsible for your businesses IT leaves. Now what about your IT? If they have admin rights and valuable passwords you will want these changing as soon as possible. What if your IT went down as soon as they had left? It would be great not to have to worry about this risk, don’t you think?
Professional and jargon-free advice
There are far too many abbreviations and technical language used in the IT industry. With the greatest respect to people outside of the industry, most businesses and individuals are going to struggle to understand what it all means. It would be much easier to have an open and simple conversation with someone about their IT without being confused.
Use technology that will transform your business at affordable costs
Businesses want their IT to do as much of the thinking work as possible, but sometimes your IT isn’t up to that level. Quick searching the marketplace for new technology only leads to some scary costs and substituting for cheaper costs can mean poor service. Working with an IT provider means you can receive specialist advice and support on the equipment that best suits your business.
Create more time and resources
Using internal resources for IT inevitably means time and costs. Having an employee who manages the IT on the side detracts them away from their primary role and can lead to reduced productivity, efficiency and, consequently, revenue. Businesses need to consider what the time of an employee is worth and if it requires someone taking a step back from their role as the IT ‘Go-to’. This will bring more focus to the business and individual and support the business in the long run.
The importance of data and backing up
You have a backup in place and you spend a lot of money backing up your data regularly. Something goes amiss and you call your IT guy who assures you that you were covered. They then explains that you either cannot recover or that it will take surplus of X days before this is completed due to your data allowance or bandwidth allocation. You can now no longer work! The X days pass and then you realise your backup didn’t work or it was only half the backup you thought you were storing.
Entrusting an expert to design and operate your recovery systems gives you the best chance of operating during your “downtime”. Business data is critical in the modern world and not worth risking or playing about with.
We would love to hear from you, contact us today and learn more about our services.