Should your company get IT support and managed services?
Many small businesses have very limited resources to operate efficiently. Daily operational costs run the bulk of the budget to the ground. Different departmental needs also have to be addressed to ensure that the company can still turn profit into income that can be allocated properly for continued success.
This can be a financial manager’s worst nightmare.
And oftentimes, budgetary cuts have to be implemented to mitigate losses.
As a manager, you need a critical eye to find where you can save money or funnel enough to increase your profits. This is why sometimes too much is put into operations and less into the operational support departments.
This could be a big mistake if you trim your operations too much and fail to see how much risk you’re putting your business in.
One way to solve this is to outsource positions as needed.
What Are Positions You Can Outsource?
Pretty much anything can be outsourced these days. You don’t need an establishment where everything can be done in one place. In fact, efficient businesses rely on outsourced services to cut down on the overhead while still managing to operate and generate profit.
If it’s a position that doesn’t require full-time attendance or hands-on operation, then you can outsource it.
One good example of services you can outsource is your frontline support. These are the people who man your customer service board through phone, chat, or email support.
To ensure that operations run smoothly, you’ll also need IT support. These are the people who maintain and ensure the equipment used by your frontliners are up and running at all times.
The question is: do you need a full team of IT specialists on site for this?
Well, depending on the size of your company, an IT team can be comprised of a single individual or a team of a dozen or more.
Take note that hiring a team of IT specialists means you also have to pay their salaries and take care of their compensations and benefits.
Is your company’s budget big enough to take on the additional payments for services from highly skilled individuals hired full-time?
This is where IT support and managed services companies come in handy.
IT Support and Managed Services
IT support and managed services companies provide you with what your company lacks on an as-needed basis. Think of it as having IT specialists on a retainer basis.
Now, IT support and managed services companies have a collection of specialists that can handle your needs based on what your concerns are. It’s like being handed the right tool to fix the problem you are facing.
For example, even if you’re based in New York, your IT support and managed services could be provided by a Chicago IT Consulting company. This remote partnership won’t have a negative impact on your productivity and has the potential to cut your operational costs down compared to if you had a full in-house team doing minimal tasks.
Because these IT specialists aren’t in-house, you won’t need to provide them with facilities and equipment that could cut into your operational or marketing budgets. This will free your resources up for hiring individuals relevant to your industry.
What Does It Mean For Your Company?
An IT support and managed services company, being a third party vendor providing you services as needed, will still act as if they are a part of your company. That means you will still get the full support you need as if you had IT specialists on site.
Since it is in their best interest to keep your company up and running, you can expect them to respond in a timely manner and monitor your operations for any issues that are present or may arise in the future. They can also assess and adjust your equipment based on what is required to ensure full uptime.
And the best thing about hiring a third part IT support and managed services company is that, since they are a collective of specialists, they have a large knowledge pool that they share amongst themselves. That means there will always be that one person within their organization who knows how to handle an issue based on their previous experience or the experience they’ve learned while in the company of other IT specialists.
So Should You Get The Services of an IT Support and Managed Services Company?
Yes. If you’re a small business who needs the services of an IT specialist, you can benefit from hiring an IT support and Managed Services company to take care of your needs.
It is relatively cheaper to hire third party vendors to provide you with services on an as-needed basis. This can free your resources up for more activities that can drive your profits up or at least maintain your bottom line and overhead expenses.
Somewhere down the road you might need an IT specialist in-house but it also helps to retain the services of an IT support and managed services company to come in and assist your business when there are issues that your full-time IT specialist can’t handle.