You’re tired of fumbling your way through ongoing IT challenges at work, or watching your team waste hours trying to troubleshoot IT for themselves. You have your business to run and they have their jobs to do. The juggle and the struggle is real. The time has come for some reliable and efficient IT support, so you can focus on what you do best.
So, what are your options?
Managed Services Versus Outsourcing
The former refers to IT support that could support a large-scale project, or give you solid strategies for your internal IT approach, in addition to completing the tasks required. Outsourcing generally refers to specific task support, sometimes referred to as IT consulting, which you might want to call on for one-off requirements.
What both of these options do have in common, is that they are external to your organisation and not in-house employee driven.
Hiring a Full-Time IT Employee
Perhaps you have reached a point in your business where hiring a full-time IT employee feels like a possibility. While it’s great knowing you have a dedicated member of staff that you can defer all IT related tasks to, there are a few factors to keep in mind.
Let’s take a look at IT managed services in comparison to hiring a full-time IT employee.
Managed Services versus Full-Time Employee
Consideration 1: Experience
Yes, having an in-house IT recruit can be incredibly handy, but what if they don’t have the answers to all of your IT woes? Chances are, an individual won’t be across every aspect of IT, but more likely to specialise in a couple of key areas and know a bit about the rest, but not in-depth and may need to call on additional support to resolve any issues outside of their skillset.
When you work with an experienced IT Managed Services provider, you are getting access to a pool of IT professionals where you can be assured that your specific requirements are catered to.
At Discover, we are able to help with a wide range of IT support, including:
Network Design
Your IT network is at the heart of all business operations – it’s important that it’s optimal to improve performance, security and overall reliability. The design and installation of your network needs to be set up correctly so it can meet the existing and future demands of your business, but also the industry at large. Whether you operate from a single location or many, your network environment needs to be solid.
Security
With the increasing rise of cybercrime, everyone needs to be mindful of how they can protect their client and business data. Data breaches and hacking techniques come in many different forms and are becoming more sophisticated and harder to identify. If your business is running on outdated IT security, you might be compromised and not even know it. Working with a managed IT services provider can help you meet data compliance so you can keep on with business as usual.
Software and Hardware
Your business needs IT products that you can rely on, are efficient and secure. At Discover we can help you save on resources by assessing and advising on the workplace technology that you actually need to empower your business to run at its best. We can secure the right products at the best possible price.
Cloud Services
Cloud computing gives businesses more flexibility, accommodating with ease as your business evolves and grows. When your cloud services are properly structured, your files and data will be protected and access given to team members as relevant to their positions (whether they’re working on-site or remotely). At Discover we provide support for cloud migration and ongoing cloud requirements.
Consideration 2: Expense
Hiring a full-time employee isn’t just a straight up hourly or daily rate. You need to factor in the extras such as annual leave, sick leave, superannuation and all the rest. An average full-time IT salary in Australia is around the $100k mark, a solid financial commitment for any business.
IT managed services can cost you a fraction of a full-time salary, while offering you a breadth of experience across all IT functions. Managed services also don’t require the added expenses and entitlements.
Consideration 2: Availability
Your in-house IT employee will be available to you and your team during office hours and will prioritise their job tasks accordingly.
When you work with external business IT support, in some instances you will have 24-hour access to an experienced team member for those moments when it all goes pear shaped in the wee hours of the morning. Your provider will also be able to offer you a number of team members to address multiple IT issues concurrently, unlike one individual within your in-house team.
Where having a dedicated employee on site sounds great, it isn’t always practical when they’re either on annual leave or sick leave. However, with the team available to you at an IT Support company, there’s a pretty good chance there will always be someone available to take your call.
Are You Ready for IT Managed Services?
If the idea of having a dedicated IT support team appeals to you, contact us at Discover to discuss the best business IT support for you and your requirements. With over 20 years in IT consulting for businesses of all sizes, we provide customised, cost-effective support services for enterprises across Australia.
