If you’ve ever owned a business, or you’re about to, you may be on the verge of finding out just how difficult it can be managing the IT infrastructure. We’re here to talk just about that and all the ways how your industry infrastructure can benefit from IT support. From higher productivity, over more flexibility to lower costs, and more time to focus on growing the business, let’s see just how outsourcing IT management and tasks can aid your industry infrastructure.
Why is IT support important?
Most small business owners start with an IT solution that is more DIY-based that just gets the job done. More often than not, they will usually invest in simple hardware such as desktop computers, phone systems, laptops, and a router for a solid internet connection. In addition to this, services are usually delivered and team member collaboration, as well as supplier and customer contact, is usually accomplished through cloud applications. However, as the small business grows, they will quickly realize that their said DIY IT support will not be able to meet their business needs adequately, hence, the need for a more sophisticated infrastructure arises because it can offer security, connectivity, time-efficiency, and overall productivity. Ensuring that your IT infrastructure becomes reliable and secure is crucial not only to the business’ sustainability but also to its scalability. Taking shortcuts with IT infrastructure to save money in the short term is thought by many to be unwise, which is why new business owners should take IT to support quite seriously.
It boosts productivity
As we’ve previously mentioned, solid IT support will boost overall productivity both in terms of staff productivity, and more importantly – user productivity. As far as staff productivity goes, your IT department is in direct relation to staff productivity. More often than not, IT staff can be consumed with fixing equipment that seems to be malfunctioning or with resolving user issues. These two tasks can take their focus off some of their core responsibilities. As IT managers over at www.ecsoffice.com note, your staff can remain focused on more important priorities such as developing your core business if you outsource the management and tasks of your IT environment to a service provider. Furthermore, if your technology fails to improve productivity and enhance the way you do business, you will end up losing money because unplanned downtime will increase. More specifically so, it costs around $ 60,000 for every 100 users, all of which can be avoided by implementing managed IT services.
Lower cost
As we’ve mentioned in the previous paragraph, switching to a managed IT provider significantly reduces infrastructure costs in many different ways. When professionals take control of your infrastructure you will be able to downsize the amount of infrastructure you have on-site by using their data centers. Furthermore, you will not only save on the cost of the huge amounts of hardware, but also on energy that it used to use, and the space required to house it. In addition to this, you will save up a lot of money that would otherwise be spent on training, licensing, and consulting. All of these needs can be covered by a monthly investment if you outsource IT management and tasks. The savings go as high as $ 1,500 per user every year just on costs related to infrastructure. Last but not least, you will save more money on hiring technical workers and staff workload due to resource allocation towards more experienced and trained personnel.
It makes it more flexible
In some cases, small businesses grow so fast that it is very difficult to keep up internally. In other words, if a small business begins to scale, it will most likely need more IT support because it won’t be able to keep up with the ever-growing demands of a rapidly developing business. We’ve previously discussed that outsourcing IT management and tasks offers more user and staff productivity, and now we’re emphasizing that this also takes away the stress both off of your employees and off management because they won’t have to hire new employees. Alongside the reduced amount of stress on you and your employees (your whole business in other words), comes a great level of flexibility. Flexibility goes hand in hand with increased efficiency, both of which are targeted towards successful business growth and bringing in more money. The best news is you can get started with IT support in no time, and the sooner you outsource these tasks and management, the sooner your business will become flexible, and therefore successful.
It saves time
Once you don’t have to worry about IT internally, you and your business will be free to focus on other important aspects of the company with more focus. More often than not, IT isn’t the company’s goal, only a supportive service. This also means that skilled IT workers will typically stick to the better-paying tech firms than as a support service, and most businesses especially if they are small can’t afford to pay top-level talent. This can make the search for experienced employees extremely difficult, and also why many businesses opt to outsource because it saves them the long search, and ultimately a great deal of time. This time can be used more effectively to put effort into scaling and growing their business, which is ultimately the end goal of any serious company. Moreover, it can also save time if your IT sector is new and inexperienced because if it’s properly outsourced, all problems will be solved in an instant, as opposed to spending hours looking for a solution.
Outsourcing IT management and tasks, as we’ve all seen, can have tremendous benefits for your industry. This is especially important if your small business is starting to boom, or you can no longer afford to waste time, resources, and flexibility to compensate for an inexperienced IT sector in your company. Outsourcing can take the stress of the responsibilities of your employees and thus make them more productive and flexible to focus on building your brand and growing your business with no interruptions.
