How Outsourced IT Services Can Be More Profitable for Your Business
All companies need to effectively leverage technology if they want to thrive in the 21st century, but many companies are too small to afford or justify full-time IT staff. Frequently, this leads to increased risk for the company if something goes wrong with networks or software that is essential for the company to function since resources to address the issue may not be readily available. This doesn’t have to be the case, though.
Outsourced IT services may offer a solution to meeting your technology needs that can improve profitability. Outsourcing your IT offers an opportunity to lower costs, improve productivity, reduce risk and gain access to greater technical expertise, all on a fixed monthly budget that adds predictability to your business.
Here are some of the ways that IT services can improve your business profitability.
Reduced Total IT Costs
Ultimately, outsourced IT services reduce the need for employed IT staff. It may be surprising, but the costs of outsourced IT services are compelling when compared to the full costs of staffing and training an internal IT support team, particularly for small and medium sized businesses. Fixed rates for IT services are predictable month to month and flexible to meet your needs over time. In addition, many outsourced IT companies can help reduce the costs of dedicated hardware to support your business operation.
Reduced Exposure to Risk
Today’s technology world is full of risk, from the loss of critical data to malicious data breaches to inbound cyber attacks. In addition, natural disasters like fire or floods and system hardware failures can pose real risk to your on-going business. By outsourcing IT you gain access to preventative backup and recovery protocols that reduce risk and ensure viability of your data systems and networks and reduce financial exposure to your business.
Everyone seems to understand that backing up important documents and systems is important, yet more than half of small businesses don’t even have a disaster plan. By contracting IT support, backups and data support can be handled automatically in the background without worry. Disaster recovery becomes an ongoing business process instead of an immediate concern. Backups are done regularly and secured off-site, maintained by staff members who are dedicated to ensuring the security of company data and that it is always ready when needed for audits or recovery.
Increased Staff Productivity
While it may be hard to measure, effective outsourced IT ensures maximum up time for your IT systems and reduces disruptions to staff productivity, from email and communication system outages to continuous availability of data.
Access to Greater Expertise when Required
In most companies, in-house IT staff will have general knowledge to address the common issues that may arise but lack technical specialization when more uncommon issues surface. Outsourced IT services can provide a team of available experts in their various fields with flexible deployment on an as-needed basis to address specific problems. Because these specialized professionals handle multiple clients simultaneously, they develop a depth of knowledge that just isn’t affordable for many companies as an on-going expense. With outsourced IT services, specialists are available to help when difficult challenges arise and these experts can be easily reached by a simple phone call to assist with any problems.
Application of Current and Emerging Technology
Staying abreast of the ever-evolving technology world is a demanding task, from new developments in cloud services to cutting edge security solutions. With an outsourced IT company, their core business is based on staying current on technology and that knowledge often translates into stronger solutions that fit your business and can result in even lower costs and risk reduction over time.
Outsourced IT presents an attractive proposition to optimize the delivery of services to support your business in a cost effective way that reduces costs, lowers risk and improves productivity within your company. If you’d like to learn more about how outsourced IT services can make your company more profitable, contact us.