Deciding to outsource your IT can be daunting for companies, but there are many reasons why outsourcing can be beneficial not only for the company but for IT departments themselves. Here, I touch on three key benefits of outsourcing IT that our customers have experienced.
1. More time to focus on innovation
The ever-changing landscape of companies wanting their employees to be able to have a mobile working experience puts extra pressure on internal IT teams. We see companies whose IT staff are increasingly being flooded with support requests of a business as usual (BAU) nature.
Moving IT infrastructure to the cloud comes with many benefits, but the question is, who is then looking after it? For instance, if employees cannot get access to their emails even for a second it causes chaos, and internal resources are forced to focus all their time on ensuring that the “lights are kept on”.
Not to downplay the importance of BAU activity, of course, but why hire a skilled workforce whose attention is largely on this? Working with a Managed Service provider allows for mundane tasks to be completed by external resources while the IT team are able to do what they love and innovate!
Resources hired internally are usually chosen for a specific skill set. Outsourcing companies have a wider team available to allow for all areas of knowledge to be covered. They also have the benefit of working with other organisations and therefore have a list of “lessons learnt”. The internal resources initially hired can then focus their primary skill set and time on critical systems within the company to make this work as efficiently as possible and provide a great end user experience.
2. Security
The daily news over the last 12 months has centred around “Breaking News: Another company has been hacked and data has been leaked”. Security has never been so important, and with GDPR having come into force in May 2018, companies are at serious risk of paying fines which could be damaging. There is a constant need and desire in the modern age to be on the latest and greatest for security purposes and to ensure that systems are efficient, which leads to money savings in the long run. A breach is not only harmful financially but can destroy a company’s brand reputation.
The leading technology companies have all proposed different solutions claiming to be completely secure, but which option do you implement in your organisation? Another model is flexible and adaptable to any changes on headcount which may occur.
Next steps
It should be noted that you do not have to outsource everything! If there is one area which you find is taking up the most of your team’s time and not providing the best benefit for your company, then why not look at how a Managed Service provider can help with that specific requirement? There are different approaches to this topic, all of which should at least be explored. This post covers just a few of the ways we have seen Professional Services organisations benefit from using Managed Services, but if you would like to discuss any of these points further, then contact us today!
