Technology is the number one force changing the face of business. Constantly evolving and adaptive technology transforms the way companies function, perhaps nowhere more so than in the field of sales and marketing. Businesses that hope to compete are in a constant race to evolve and adopt these technologies before the technology becomes irrelevant, lest the business slips and ends up falling by the wayside.
There are few ways to ensure this positioning without viable IT technical support, which is one reason why any business leader should consider outsourcing IT services through Managed Services. Here are several others.
What Are IT Support Services?
A professional IT support provider helps manage the network, users, services, and devices that are integral to a company’s operations. It helps guarantee that the organization’s network is current and that its technology provides seamless operations across all departments, hierarchies, and roles within the company.
While every IT support provider offers different services, common tasks include:
- Network monitoring, management, and security
- Data backup and recovery
- Authentication
- Data storehouse, warehouse, and management
- Process execution and enforcement
- Systems operation and support services
Benefits of Outsourcing IT Support Solutions
There are immediate and long-term benefits to working with IT support services.
1. Reduce labor costs
Training and maintaining a large in-house IT department is costly. The most basic tech support specialists in the United States earn an average of $46,420 annually. Systems Analysts, on the other hand, earn upwards of $80,000 every year, with Data Administrators and Network Administrators earning nearly the same. Hiring temporary IT tech employees often end in disappointment given the limited investment, both mentally and financially. Employing a company dedicated to providing IT support services, on the other hand, brings highly skilled workers at a fraction of the labor-related costs.
2. Lessen IT costs
Installing IT infrastructure with networks, servers, security, storage, and a whole host of other components is extremely pricey. Outsourcing IT system support transforms fixed IT costs into variable costs and gives you room to budget accordingly. In short, you only pay for what you use, which can be a huge cost reduction. Add to that the cost of maintaining and servicing such a system frequently exceeds the cost of the initial outlay, and outsourcing seems wise.
3. Provide uninterrupted flow of service
As technology grows increasingly complex, hardware and software management has become notably more challenging. With a saturated industry, particularly in sales and marketing, businesses need to have innovative hardware and software solutions. They also need end-to-end networking and a continuous flow of functionality for internet, intranet, and extranet. Professional IT network service providers can fully handle such technicalities.
4. Dampen anxiety
When disaster management and recovery are tackled with competence, employees tend to be less anxious. The challenges evident when the internet goes down or a computer crashes are not only physical; they are highly emotional. Workers worry about lost productivity, threatened security, and disappearing information. With a skilled IT services provider, such worries subside because services are up and running smoothly.
5. Remain focused on core business
Every manager likely feels there aren’t enough hours in the day to tackle all the challenges. Having to divide attention between core business functions and IT related concerns limits potential even more. Outsourcing allows employees to stay focused on what they are skilled at, trained for, and paid to do.
6. Enjoy expanded resources
Although large businesses often have the resources necessary to maintain cutting edge technologies and services themselves, smaller businesses generally do not. This advantage plays out in numerous ways, such as in the level of productivity a company enjoys, its mobility and efficiency, and the means available to reach out to prospects. Outsourcing services provides a more equitable environment for both small companies and large organizations.
7. Decrease risk
There’s no way around it: every business investment carries a level of risk. An ever-evolving palette of government regulations, competitors, economic conditions, and technologies ensures this is the case. Companies who provide IT system support assume much of this risk. They harbor specific industry-related knowledge—most importantly those about security and compliance issues. With this knowledge, they can better ascertain and avoid inherent risks.
8. Guarantee compliance and security
In the world of account data protection, there is no such as thing as being too safe. Take a look at these major data breaches from 2015 alone for evidence:
- Hackers stole the data from 4.8 million users at V-tech;
- Attorney-client privileges may have been violated for 70 million inmates as millions of call logs, and thousands of call recordings were stolen;
- Stealing credit card data from Donald Trump’s hotels across the United States, hackers compromised the information of thousands of people throughout the country;
- When as many as 15 million T-mobile users had their information stolen, the results included lost social security numbers, passport numbers, birth dates, names, and addresses.
And the Ashley Madison scandal? Let’s not even go there.
To safeguard against these breaches of data, companies must be up to date on the latest governing standards. Business owners must ask themselves whether they have a DMZ installed, whether their firewall is current and if all of the workstations and servers are properly audited. It’s important to also look at whether the business has implemented and adhered to current PCI security standards. With the varied payment methods available to organizations, due diligence must be taken to protect data. A qualified managed services provider can minimize the risks associated with keeping such data, thereby minimizing the risks associated with doing business.
9. Increase competitiveness
Companies that try to implement and maintain all of the IT work themselves often have to dedicate substantially more to research, development, and implementation. This results in two problems for the company: higher costs and more time. The costs are likely passed on to the customers, which means that the business becomes less competitive regarding product prices. By taking longer to bring new products to the market, their competitiveness also suffers since other companies are moving faster.
10. Focus on a Unique Selling Proposition
Many start-up companies fail for one common reason: They don’t have a Unique Selling Proposition (USP). This refers to what separates a company from its competitors and can take many different forms, such as having the lowest prices or having the most innovative products.
In a market where one’s relevance is determined by the ability to grow and innovate, those that fail to do so become redundant and go out of business. Consequently, business leaders must focus on identifying and nurturing their USP and delegate other time-consuming tasks to those who specialize in doing them.
Rather than waste time trying to learn the intricacies that a skilled IT team already knows or trying to figure out what went wrong, it’s much more cost-effective to outsource these services. Doing so allows leaders to focus on what they do best and further their organization’s Unique Selling Proposition.
11. Recover from disaster
When a cyber-attack, flood, earthquake, or other disaster hits, management must hit the ground running. They must tend to employee injuries, product loss, insurance claims, lost revenue, customer relations, and structural damage, among other tasks.
That said, a business’s data is its most important resource aside from people. Many companies are ill-equipped to handle such situations, any of which can cause a business to halt production immediately. Given that disaster can strike at any time, a delay in recovery can have dire consequences. As such, it’s important to have the human power and resources readily available to make quick repairs; something that’s made possible with the help of outside professionals who are familiar with disaster recovery and have backup technology at their disposal.
By outsourcing IT support services, a company can free up its valuable resources and focus on what matters: making the wheels of the business turn. They can home in on marketing, product development, and improving customer relations. Although the road toward change can be daunting, hiring outside professionals allows companies to learn, grow, and evolve.