Benefits of Outsourcing IT

Outsourcing IT functions has become a common practice for businesses not just in the UK but across the world. That’s essentially why the value of outsourcing IT contracts in the private sector in the UK alone has soared to £4.9 billion in 2017, which is a 9% increase over the year before. If anything, outsourcing of IT services alone represents a huge 73% of the UK outsourcing industry.

In essence, outsourcing IT functions has become second nature to most companies and businesses. It’s the only way to go if you want to stay relevant in your industry and, of course, ahead of the competition. Believe it or not, businesses are increasingly looking to outsource IT to stay relevant when it comes to innovation, digitization, automation, and analytics, which are integral in today’s business world. At IT IN Business, we believe you do not want to lag in these areas of your business and that why we offer the best IT support solutions.

Again, more and more businesses (69% of businesses in the UK) are outsourcing their IT as a way of reducing their operating costs. 64% of businesses in the UK see outsourcing IT services as a vehicle for business transformation and we couldn’t agree more.

There are, of course, several benefits of outsourcing your IT operations (more on that later). Nonetheless, it’s important to look at the reasons or key signs that outsourcing your IT support could be the better choice if not the best. Below are some of the reasons to outsource your IT support.

Whether you don’t have the necessary in-house expertise or enough headcount in your IT department to manage the workload, not aligning yout IT with your business needs can negatively affect your business operations. This is one of the main reasons to outsource your IT support. If this is the case, you’d be spending more time on your IT setup while spending less time on the most important things: your business objectives and re-focusing those valuable in-house resources towards value adding projects can make a real differeence.

You should also understand that the cost of operation when you solely rely on one person can be tremendous. From having to deal lost orders to a damaged reputation, these things are of great importance and that why you should hire us as your IT professionals.

Although one of the main reasons why businesses outsource IT support is to lower overhead costs, the main discussion should be on how outsourcing IT can improve your operations and business objectives. In other words, the main aim of outsourcing IT should be to enhance business continuity and strategic alignment with business goals, both short term, and long term. Well, lowering your overhead costs by outsourcing IT is important but it necessarily doesn’t give you an edge when it comes to competition.

That being said, you should refocus your attention on outsourcing IT if it improves your operations. In essence, you should outsource your IT support if it increases your business flexibility, improves your operations, helps you remain relevant, and effectively helps you achieve your business objectives and goals. At IT IN Business, we help you understand what works for your organization and putting it to work in the right way.

You’ll see the true worth of outsourcing your IT support if your business projects require niche expertise. For instance, it can be a good move to outsource your IT support if you need to develop an app or artificial intelligence. Under such circumstances, outsourcing IT from a specialist can enhance efficiency and be better than hiring a full-time expert or challenging your in-house IT department.

As we noted earlier, outsourcing your IT doesn’t have to be all about budget concerns. Sometimes you should choose to outsource your IT if it makes strategic sense. Needless to say, IT professionals often have years of experience and a high level of expertise than your in-house staff. And even if you wanted to have a team of highly-experienced and knowledgeable IT staff, it would take you years and much effort to build it up.

Are you still not sure whether to outsource your IT support or not? Well, you should be able to make a concrete decision after looking at some of the benefits associated with outsourcing IT functions of your business as described below.

As a senior executive, you’ve probably noticed how various technologies revolving around software and hardware rapidly become obsolete. Honestly speaking, it can be quite challenging for your in-house IT department to constantly keep up with these changes. Failing to keep up with these changes could be a recipe for your business to lag behind your competitors.

Having access to the best of the latest technology is essentially one of the main benefits of outsourcing your IT support. Outsourcing your IT support fundamentally gives you the benefit of having an entire group of IT professionals keeping you up-to-date with the best of the latest technology and how they can be beneficial to your business.

At IT IN Business, we take pride in the fact that a single person can’t be as up to date as we are. That’s because we directly work with vendors like Microsoft and we are always on top of our game. In other words, we know what’s coming way before they’re released and sometimes even participate in product design. With all these tricks in up our sleeves, you can’t go wrong when you work with us. In essence, we will help you stay ahead of the competition.

Additionally, you have to understand that new cloud technologies emerge every single day and you need to keep to date. Your BAU (Business As Usual) cannot be done with one or two people, and that’s why we’re here to help you through this journey.      

Outsourcing your IT support can provide your business with the financial benefit of a leaner overhead cost. By outsourcing your IT support, you do away with issues such as software licenses, potential compliance with government regulations, as well as the need to install huge and bulky hardware that you require to operate your IT operations efficiently.

Given that core competency is the priority for IT service providers, they often hire highly-qualified and highly-experienced staff with specific qualifications and certifications. This is essentially integral for your business in the sense that you’ll always be guaranteed to work with the best IT professionals. This can also be important in the sense that you don’t have to hire the wrong person for the job.

Keep in mind that hiring the right talent takes time, money, and effort. This is a huge gamble in the sense that it might or might not work. Again, hiring new talent always brings to your organization different skills, so you need to know who you’re hiring ad chances are you’ll only know after you’ve hired.

And even if you train your in-house staff and ensure that they’re up to date with all stuff, it can be expensive and time-consuming. It would also require C-Level managers who fully understand what needs to happen with technology and the business.

At IT IN Business, our staff members have done it a hundred times more than the guy you’ll ever get in-house. Our team players know the issues, how to fix them, and what might go wrong long before it goes wrong. That’s exactly where the value is and that’s what we provide you.

Typically, professional IT vendors have multiple resources that they use to provide their services. While such resources may be lacking within your in-house IT department, outsourcing IT support gives you’re the opportunity to become more flexible in your business operations thanks to the availability of these resources.

The continuous growth of technology makes it more challenging to manage both software and hardware. But because you need a continuous flow of innovative hardware and hardware solutions, outsourcing these services is the only way to go. You’ll not only be guaranteed uninterrupted functionality but you’ll have professional IT service providers to handle any technicality around the clock.

When you work with us, you’ll spread your risks and not put all your eggs in one basket. In other words, you do not have to deal with having your IT interrupted just because your in-house guy is absent for whatever reason. And because this is likely to happen at one point, working with us is a sure guarantee that you won’t have your workflow interrupted because your in-house IT guy is sick, on vacation or has moved on.

Again, you won’t have to worry about the IT guy taking your in-house knowledge with him or putting you under pressure to negotiate a pay rise. This is a situation that you wouldn’t want in your organization. Imagine having to hire a new IT guy and investing your efforts in training him to be up to speed with what the last guy was doing.

In essence, the hand over process, documentation and the understanding of your business and the industry, in general, can be a real pain and that’s something you do not want. Worst still; imagine the pressure that you can find yourself in if your in-house IT guy doesn’t show up to that all-important meeting with investors and the system goes down!