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The demand you’re dealing with has never been higher or more critical to business success. The rapid pace of tech acceleration stemming from the Pandemic, combined with skills shortages and a wave of economic uncertainty, means that IT managers are expected to do more than ever, often with fewer resources. More and more are turning to outsourced IT support to alleviate pressures.
This is further compounded by a requirement to constantly revise knowledge to deal with changing tech and manage your IT estate across a variety of on-site and home environments, all while dealing with the ever-present threat of cybercrime.
With all that to deal with, is it any wonder that more than half (53%) of IT managers are “extremely” or “somewhat likely” to look for a new job this year*?
With budget constraints, getting the additional resource to deal with a large workload can be difficult to receive sign-off for. However, outsourced IT support can free up a significant amount of your time, as well as help to build long-term resources and resilience for your infrastructure.
The Great Resignation is more than a buzzword. Hiring has taken a real hit, especially for skilled staff, like those who work in IT. It can take months to find suitable candidates for open positions, and even longer to train them to a high standard. Plus, with jobseekers in more demand, there’s no guarantee team members will stay for the long haul.
Outsourcing your IT to a dedicated team helps you circumvent these challenges. You can have help at hand for all the support you need within days. Technical expertise you know you can trust is just a phone call away.
Experienced outsourced teams will have the flexibility to take on as much or as little as you need support with. They come as an extension of your team, complementing your strengths, and filling your gaps.
Alongside the difficulty of hiring additional IT professionals, there are enormous commitments to cost that come with this, including salary, benefits, and training needs. In addition, hiring for short-term challenges can leave businesses paying significant amounts for resources they may not need anymore.
Outsourced IT support needn’t be expensive. Most providers have a range of options that can be tailored to suit your specific business needs. So, whether you need additional hands for a major project, or a permanent team in the background monitoring and maintaining your network, help will be available no matter what your budget is.
Working with a team of experts also enriches your business with additional insight from the wider world of IT, providing you with suggestions to improve your tech for performance or price, depending on your goals.
Because outsourcing your IT requirements means services will be tailored to your business’s needs, aspects such as past issues, as well as future scale-ups or downs your business may go through will all be considered, so you don’t have to spend more money on IT again while your company goes through these changes.
Not only that, working with outsourced specialists allows you to rely on their continued upskilling and education, helping you keep on top of the latest tech trends and what they might mean for your growing business. The sense of security in knowing your business’s immediate IT needs are being met relieves a lot of pressure. But having that same peace of mind for the long-term changes and challenges your business may face can be truly liberating.
Services offered by MSPs, and support companies are vast, and not knowing what to look for can be daunting. Here are a few key areas we suggest any outsourced IT providers should be able to cover:
One of the biggest burdens on IT time is setting up new devices. This is an admin-heavy job that can easily be taken care of by an outsourced team (as can device disposal), saving you more time to spend on making business improvements and adding value.
In addition, the user experience becomes seamless, creating a fantastic impression of your company and your team from day one of any new employees’ tenure.
When something goes wrong, for example, accidental damage when devices are moved between home and the office, it’s reassuring to know your outsourced IT support can quickly and conveniently fix the issue, wherever the device is, so look out for device repair services when considering providers.
Quickly fixing problems when something goes wrong is important for any business to keep running smoothly. But can your provider proactively notify you of an issue, before you or your users are even aware something’s wrong?
A professional external team should be able to not only log and track all of your IT assets but also predict when a problem is about to arise through regular monitoring of your resources, especially for your critical infrastructure.
This can include areas such as storage, so that they can advise you when you might need to free up some space, right through to major issues, including hardware failures or security vulnerabilities.
Having help to deal with day-to-day issues is nice, but major emergencies don’t always happen conveniently within office hours. You can’t be expected to be on shift every minute of every day but leveraging the resource available in an outsourced team can eliminate the risk of out-of-hours failures going unresolved.
Look out for UK-based teams with 24/7 support options available, as they will have engineers who can be on site quickly to address your IT issues.
Different issues require different levels of expertise. When something goes wrong, you want to know if your outsourced partner is sending the right person to help. To ensure the team you’re engaging with will respond flexibly and quickly, ask if they have a clear escalation process for tickets.
In doing so, you can be confident that the team has the ability to immediately resolve minor issues, but can also provide specialists where required to support with major problems.
One thing to watch out for with outsourced IT support is usage limits. Being charged for every interaction can leave you feeling unsupported, unsure whether an issue is worth the cost of seeking help to get it fixed.
Working with an outsourced team that really values you means that they’ll be happy to help with any and all issues within their scope, even if it’s as simple as a forgotten password or a faulty software installation.
Automation continues to make waves in accuracy and efficiency, but when something goes wrong, you can’t replace the reassurance of dealing with another human. When you raise a ticket for external support, you should feel secure knowing that there’s a human on the other side who can look after you and your business and take pride in doing so.
It can be overwhelming to identify exactly what your business needs and find the right help for whatever this might be. At Millgate, we’ve been helping clients succeed for over 25 years, so we appreciate the challenges IT managers face in today’s environment.
In that time, we’ve not only developed a highly effective remote support team but a deep knowledge of exactly how they can best support different businesses.
Get in touch with our friendly team for a discussion about your specific goals and how our IT services can help you achieve them.
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