As the world moves ever further into the digital age, technology adoption has become necessary for the growth of modern businesses. No longer is information technology (IT) the responsibility of tech-based companies. The always-connected and always-on reality of modern businesses has made IT support an essential component of business operations. Without it, most company operations will simply fail or be put to a halt.
Sadly, as technology continues to evolve at a lightning speed, most businesses, especially startups and small companies, find it hard and challenging to keep up with this pace. While these businesses recognize the importance of good IT support, they may find it difficult to get the necessary help that they need.
If that’s the case, why not consider outsourcing your IT support team? This feature shares how outsourced IT support can help your business thrive and keep up with the advancing business world.
But first, it’s best to take a closer look at what IT support is and what they do. Keep on reading to find out more.
Understanding IT Support
On its most basic level, IT support means assisting individuals or businesses regarding technology-related products and services. Its purpose is to provide users with answers and solutions to technical issues they may be experiencing. This means that an IT support team is equally responsible for installing security solutions on computer devices as helping forgetful employees recover their lost passwords.
That said, IT support is more than just answering employees’ technological questions and fixing their issues. An IT support team is also responsible for optimizing network performance and securing a company’s technology and networks against cyberattacks. Not only that, yet they’re also responsible for setting up, installing, maintaining, and configuring all technology-related equipment and software. And they can proactively monitor business equipment and software and prepare backup site plans and disaster recovery strategies.
In simpler terms, an effective IT support team provides employees or end users with resources to quickly resolve technical issues and help them get back to their work while ensuring the continuous operations of a business.
Outsourcing IT Support: What Does It Mean
Sometimes called contracting out, outsourcing refers to hiring an outside company to perform services or handle specific operations for your business. The outside company, also known as a third-party or service provider, arranges for its own employees to perform the services or tasks either on-site at your business’s own facilities, at their own premises, or at external locations.
In general, businesses today can outsource several services or tasks. Yet most businesses often outsource IT services including IT support.
Outsourcing IT support simply means hiring another IT company like Spectrumwise to manage your business’s IT support functions and processes.
6 Reasons To Outsource Your IT Support
Now that you have a better understanding of what outsourcing IT support means, you might be wondering why you should do it. Here are some of the great benefits of outsourcing your IT support to a third party.
1. It Helps Control Costs
This is perhaps the most important reason why most businesses choose to outsource their IT support and other IT-related processes. Cost is a significant consideration for every business, even more so for smaller businesses.
As a business owner, you’re always looking for ways to boost your profit margin while reducing your operation costs. This way, you have enough budget to survive and grow your company.
Now, outsourcing your IT support means you’ll have to spend money on the services of another company. And while it may cost your business, outsourcing actually saves you more money compared to building your own IT support team.
Building an in-house IT support team means you need to find the right skills and talents to fill the roles. And hiring will cost you lots of money–from the job posting and hiring to onboarding and training IT support staff. As regular employees, your IT support personnel will also have monthly salaries as well as other perks from paid and vacation leaves to health maintenance organization (HMO) plans.
Aside from these significant labor costs, you’ll need to invest in the right technology as well. You need to equip your IT support team with the right software and hardware so that can do their job properly and efficiently. If you need to build a comprehensive IT infrastructure to support your business process, you’ll need enough space to accommodate your servers and equipment.
In a nutshell, you’ll need significant funding to build a working IT support team. And for a small business, such expenses are simply impractical.
You don’t have to worry about any of these expenses when you outsource. By outsourcing your IT support function, you only need to worry about finding the right agency. You’ll benefit from a predictable monthly IT support cost and save expenses on finding the right skill and the right tools they need.
As such, the money you save from outsourcing your IT support team can be used for other important processes such as product development or marketing campaigns to help your business gain more profits.
2. It Gives You Access To Diverse Expertise And Technology
As technology advances, your IT team also needs to keep up with these changes. This way they can support your growing business needs. Unfortunately, an in-house team means you’re limited to your current employees’ experience and knowledge. So, unless you provide them with the necessary training and seminar, you’ll gave limited expertise in various IT support situations.
This is not an issue with an outsourced IT support company. Essentially, you’re hiring another company specialized in providing IT support functions and services. This means all of their employees are IT experts in their own rights. So, you’re not hiring per individual with specific expertise, you’re hiring a whole team of IT support experts, each having different skill sets and expertise.
Aside from the diverse expertise you get, you also get access to their specialized technology. In such a fast-paced technological world, the tools and software you invested in today can end up being outdated tomorrow. By hiring an IT support company, you can ensure that your company can leverage the latest tools and technology to keep up with the demands of the modern business world.
3. It Allows Higher Scalability
Outsourcing your IT support to a third party gives you better flexibility, allowing you to scale up and down throughout your business’s operations. Most service providers offer a pay-as-you-go service plan. This means that you can scale up your IT support needs during your business’s busiest times and scale down as needed.
What’s more, the most reliable IT support service provider also has a shared approach, meaning you can easily add or remove experts from your team or technologies as needed, depending on the demands of your specific project.
So, regardless of how your business operates, the best IT support agency can keep up with your business’s demands and needs.
4. It Allows Your Core IT Team To Be Focused
One of the biggest reasons why most businesses choose to tap into IT support operations is to reduce the burden on their in-house IT team and help them focus more on core objectives and workflow.
In general, IT managers observe that their teams are easily pulled into tasks that are way beyond their expertise or knowledge, which ultimately slows them down. Some are even forced to multitask, which increases their stress level as well. Switching between expertise and workflows, your in-house team are prone to making mistakes and error or causing poor, unsatisfactory outcomes.
Outsourcing your IT support team can help avoid this risk and keep your existing IT team focused on doing the jobs they mastered moving forward, meeting core goals and objectives.
5. It Brings Higher Efficiency And Productivity
In line with the previous benefit, when you free your existing IT team from excess functions, you help improve their overall productivity and efficiency. Nonetheless, it’s not just your in-house IT team that’ll benefit from outsourcing to a third party.
With a reliable IT support team, all repetitive IT support functions are optimized and streamlined. Rest assured that all technologies in your business are regularly updated and working efficiently. Further, they help with the strategic automation of key areas of your business while resolving any potential issues that may arise.
With your business technology and systems working smoothly, general tasks are completed more efficiently and faster. This results in overall higher productivity across the company.
6. It Helps You Stay Proactive
Technology may provide convenience and higher efficiency to any business, but it does come with inherent risks that can halt your business’s operation. If you want your company to survive in an increasingly risky digital world, you need to be proactive against security issues.
Unfortunately, most in-house IT teams are reactive to issues that arise throughout the workweek instead of being proactive. What’s more, your in-house team is often limited in terms of individual expertise and proper tools to ensure strong protection.
By outsourcing your IT support functions, you get more robust protection and security for your business. You can rest assured that there are always on-call and available cybersecurity professionals monitoring and handling your system security.
Takeaway
Your IT support team is essential to the operations of your company. Reliable IT support can make a significant difference between a growing company and one that’s struggling to stay open.
As the business world continues to digitize, outsourcing professional IT support has become more on-demand and for so many good reasons–from streamlining your core IT support functions at a lower cost to increasing overall business productivity and efficiency, ultimately contributing to your company’s growth and advancement.