5 Ways You Can Encourage Colleagues to Outsource Your IT
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]We get it. You already know how valuable it can be working with a managed IT service provider. But with so many stakeholders at your company, getting buy-in from fellow decision-makers to outsource IT can be challenging. To help make your case to co-workers, here are five persuasive points they should consider:
1. The majority of companies outsource their IT.
According to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), 60% of companies outsource the management and maintenance of their IT. And these companies spend an average of 10.2% of their overall expense budget on outsourced IT each year, per Computer Economics. Your colleagues can take serious stock in the fact that most companies believe outsourcing their IT needs is a worthwhile investment.
2. It’s not all or nothing. Managed IT service providers can work with your in-house team.
Complete an audit of all the tasks your current IT staff performs on a daily, monthly, quarterly and annual basis. What roles can your team continue to fill, and what will be managed more effectively by an IT partner? Maybe an outsourced support team can handle the day-to-day server maintenance and upgrades to hardware and software, while the internal staff oversees bigger projects? Perhaps your system could benefit from a yearly check-up but your team doesn’t have the bandwidth to perform it themselves?
It may be easier to encourage your colleagues to get on-board with outsourcing your IT if you start small. Rather than suggesting a complete overhaul, show them the areas of business that will benefit most from some outsourced IT help.
3. It’s more cost-effective to work with local technology consultants.
Anytime a company makes a change it must ask an important question: How will this affect our bottom line? Do some legwork, and provide your colleagues with a cost comparison, in both dollars and resources.
How many hours does it take your IT team to completely manage the system each month? By equating that to dollars, you can illustrate how much the company is spending on items that can be easily outsourced, including managing data backups, network security monitoring and repetitive or low-level tasks like retrieving archived files.
Next, demonstrate cost in terms of effort. Will outsourcing IT allow personnel to take on higher-level tasks? Will it reduce overtime and errors? Will it improve the morale of overworked staff?
It is important to provide concrete examples of ways your company will be streamlined.
Lastly, compare the expense of hiring another salaried employee (or two or three) to outsourcing an external managed IT service provider. What cost savings exist when you’re no longer financing employee wages and benefits, and just paying for the expertise of knowledgeable consultants?
4. A full team of IT service providers has more experience.
The IT landscape is a big one. Far too vast for just a few people to wrap their heads around. Outsourcing your IT gives your business access to an entire team and their collective know-how. At Concept Technology, we make sure you are working with the best of the best in managed IT services. Our rigorous 10-step hiring process sifts out the top players with the smarts and experience to get the job done well and done right the first time.
And because Concept Technology supports 300 businesses in Nashville, we’re actively managing an incredible array of technology. That means we’re living and breathing every aspect of IT every single day. And we love it – it never gets old or mundane to us. In an outsourced partnership, you can leverage that extensive knowledge for your company.
5. Internal IT staff take vacation and sick days when you need them most.
We’ve seen it time and time again. The network goes down while the company’s IT Director is gone fishing.
Outsourcing IT creates a failsafe scenario for monitoring and managing your computer system – and it keeps a company from going into panic mode if your internal IT person is out of the office. The average full-time employee gets 8.5 – 10.9 sick days every year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. And, of course, it will be one of those days when the router suddenly goes on the fritz, or a storm takes your system down, or a server gets overloaded. The good news? With an outsourced IT team, it’s handled.
No matter the issue, you can call for backup when your internal go-to’s are out for the day. In fact, your IT provider is probably monitoring your system from afar and knows any issues before you do – ensuring they get taken care of quickly. With outsourced IT services, your staff will feel infinitely better about taking a vacation or calling in sick without having to keep one eye on work.
Still need help presenting your case? We can put you in touch with several companies that decided to use IT managed services. Just give us a call: 615-321-6428.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][wproto_image image=”10927″ link_type=”custom” custom_link=”http://concepttechnologyinc.com/technology-self-assessment/” image_align=”aligncenter”][/vc_column][/vc_row]
