Agile, Secure & Responsive IT Environments
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Do you think of IT as a necessary evil, mere cost saver, or a resource to help grow your business?
It is all too easy to ignore the problems proper IT support can fix. But if you step back and look at the larger picture, you begin to see how Outsourced IT can be a strategic partner to unify your business and increase efficiency across the board.
Here are six ways investing in IT support can help your business grow:
IT outages and unplanned downtime could cripple your organization. And not just your business, even businesses as large and respected as Amazon. In July 2018, they experienced an unplanned outage lasting about 15 minutes.
Any time your IT systems go down, your business will lose out. This could be a direct loss, as through a reduction in sales, or it could be an indirect loss due to a drop in productivity that happens when your employees lose access to systems and data.
When you’re growing your business, it’s tempting to cut corners to drive down costs. One of those corners cut is IT support. Even thought the best solution for IT support is to have in-house resources, this is out of reach of many businesses.
You have their salaries to pay for — with the national average sitting around $50,000. On top of this, there are costs associated with recruitment, training, and benefits. And your work is never done. You will need to recruit more staff as your business grows and ensure your staff keeps up to date with industry trends.
Not only that, but the Society for Human Resource Management recently warned about high rate of staff turnover.
"More than a quarter of employees (25.7%) are actively seeking new job opportunities and over half (55.5%) are passively open to new job opportunities." On the other hand, "... the data suggests managed IT services can lower your IT costs by up to 40%.”
SHRM report by Accounting Principals and Ajilon
Outsourcing your IT support strike a balance between a controlled budget and reliable support.
Owners of businesses often like to retain control of IT support — or delegate it to employees in other departments — to keep costs down. This is often based off of the belief that there is someone already on staff with enough IT knowledge to keep the company running.
How hard can it be? The truth is, this isn’t an efficient — or reliable — way for you or your employees to spend their time.
Think about it:
Could time be better spent on actually on their day jobs of growing the business, rather than firefighting issues that arise on a day-to-day basis? How will you cope when a major issue arises and you don’t have the right people there to support you through it?
Outsourcing your IT support means your staff doesn’t have to worry or stop whenever an IT problem occurs — qualified professionals are on-hand to fix the problem so your resources stay focused where they are needed.
Does your current IT strategy only react when a problem occurs, or does it find and neutralize the problem before it impacts your business?
With dedicated IT support, your infrastructure can make the important move from reactive to proactive. Outsourced IT support gives you 24/7 network monitoring for peace of mind.
Dedicated IT support can identify potential issues before they escalate, reducing — or even eliminating — any downtime or disruption that occurs as a result. This reduces the financial impact on your business — and helps you maintain your reputation with customers. Two elements key to business growth.
As a business, it’s vital to protect your organization from cybercriminals. It’s easy to believe it will never happen to you, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
If you want to avoid such attacks on your business, you need to work with a team of experts to ensure you keep pace with the techniques used by cybercriminals.
“Despite cybersecurity being the top technology priority in the past year, many organizationssee it as their most underperforming IT area.”
AT&T Business Insights Study
According to AT&T, there is a disconnect between the way business owners perceive cybersecurity risks — and how they act upon it in their organization.
Outsourced IT support can help you bridge this gap and protect your business from threats that could cripple your business (and your reputation).
The IT industry is constantly evolving to keep up with new technologies. If you want to maximize business growth, it’s essential that you have an IT support team that is able to keep pace in an evolving industry.
Not only is it difficult to ensure an in-house team keeps up to speed, but there’s currently a shortage of skilled IT professionals in the U.S. A recent report from Gartner highlighted this. They listed IT talent shortage as one of five emerging risks.
“Organizations face this talent crunch at a time when they are already challenged by risks that are exacerbated by a lack of appropriate expertise. Previous hiring strategies for coping with talent disruptions are insufficient in this environment.”
Gartner, Inc.
They also suggest there will be 1.4 million job openings for IT specialists in 2020. This makes outsourced IT support seem even more appealing, if not essential, for business owners who may not be able to afford hiring an on-staff professional.
Are you ready to outsource your IT support to people who want to help you grow your business? Get in touch to find out how we can help or read our white paper.