In house vs Outsourcing IT Support: Which is The Right Choice for Your Business? When companies find themselves needing to address a specific business need, one question they'll often have...
At what point does a company’s IT system stop helping them be productive and instead become a burden to the business’s operations? Often when handling just a few workstations, employees can remain efficient and overcome issues by themselves, albeit with some difficulty. If your network starts to fail regularly and workstations run slower than usual, managing the system in-house can become an impediment to productivity and add unnecessary overhead to the company.
Once your team grows to more than ten workstations and the company needs to deploy servers to manage their emails, printers, or host their applications, that is when outsourcing IT support starts to make fiscal sense. In these circumstances, even having access to a dedicated IT support person or a small team may no longer suffice. For companies in London who frequently run into similar IT problems, outsourced IT support will help them move towards a more sustainable business model.
It is common practice to add additional IT systems and hardware as required when growing a business. This works well in the beginning, but after a few years of operation and as your team grows, relying on legacy equipment can start hampering growth as inefficiencies creep into the digital infrastructure. This is when moving to a remote support model will ensure your company can scale operations and grow within their market with a reliable solution from a reputable IT service provider.
Take the following scenario. Let’s look at a London based travel agency as an example. They currently have 25 desks and a few networked printers and scanners. When they started, they only had a few desks, and they relied on one of their employees (let us call him John) to take care of their IT equipment. John is talented, but he also has his own workload to complete every day. While the travel agency had less than ten desks John could handle fixing his colleagues' IT issues such as setting up email clients and troubleshooting network and printers’ downtimes without failing to finish his own tasks.
Outsourcing your IT will free up staff to focus on their work and increases company productivity and data security.
The pressures on John to handle his own workload and remain productive while the travel agency kept growing and adding more desks soon became unmanageable. With 25 desks, John could no longer get to all his tasks and keep the IT systems in working order. What took a couple of hours each week now required a considerable effort every day. Also, the IT issues John was now having to solve were becoming more complex and required thorough analysis and planning. The company had constant issues with IT and staff were not functioning as efficiently as the should have been. The way the company operated was no longer sustainable. Management started looking for a solution and opted to outsource IT support. John became the main contact point person with their new IT service provider as his experience and knowledge of his company was highly valuable. His colleagues could file support tickets directly and IT service technicians promptly solve their IT issue remotely or onsite.
Their new London based IT support company did an assessment of the agency’s IT needs. They recommended changes to the setup and defined a clear remote and onsite IT support plan. This suited for the agency’s growing needs. It gave the travel agency access to a robust IT system within a consistent monthly budget and freed up their key staff to focus on their duties.
Technology continues to improve every facet of the business world. The better the devices, communication networks, and information management systems become, the more work people can do in a smaller amount of time. Digital technology is a core enabler for the growth of modern businesses. With an outsourced IT service provider, your company will benefit from improved IT security, cybersecurity, dedicated remote support, and improved hardware and network connectivity.
The rise in cybercrime poses a significant risk to growing businesses. With a single phishing attack, a hacker can bring down an entire company’s IT system by using ransomware. To keep the network secure requires advanced threat intelligence systems and firewalls that continually monitors all incoming traffic. Outsourcing IT support in London will provide your company with dedicated IT security professionals who ensure the entire system remains protected.
Whenever a fault does occur, you’ll have access to dedicated support agents who troubleshoot the issues either onsite or remotely, depending on the circumstances. Your team can simply call a helpline to file a ticket and an IT expert will attend to the issue. Your company will no longer have to rely on staff who may already be under pressure to get their own work done while trying to keep everyone else’s workstations operational.
If a business needs to scale, it won’t need to delay expanding operations while it waits for the cash flow to acquire new technologies. As needs change, you can adapt the agreement and gain access to new equipment and expanded networks while maintaining a single, predictable budget for IT systems.
Additionally, the outsourced IT support company will take regular backups of the data and ensure compliance with GDPR legislation. IT support packages can include disaster recovery plans, provide cloud-migration services, or the setup of Office 365 or G-Suite applications for better information integration throughout the office.
You can choose what you want your IT support company to provide. Tailored packages can include consultancy and strategy services, remote support, help with specific migration or upgrade projects, or a fully outsourced IT department. Whatever services your company needs, these come with a single monthly cost, ensuring you don’t run into unexpected charges when you experience issues.
Financial predictability is a blessing for every business. Outsourcing your IT with a flat monthly fee gives an extra layer of security for your business.
At UK IT Service, we can work with you to find a solution that suits all of your IT support requirements. We have a dedicated team of London based IT professionals that provide expert services to our customers, helping you grow and expand with ease. For London companies who find their IT systems are stifling their scalability and costs them productivity losses regularly, an outsourced IT support solution will alleviate these growing pains.
For improved system reliability and improved technology and hardware solutions in your London offices, speak to one of our service agents at UK IT Service today.
In house vs Outsourcing IT Support: Which is The Right Choice for Your Business? When companies find themselves needing to address a specific business need, one question they'll often have...
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