After a slump in 2020, Gartner predicts that worldwide IT spending will increase by four percent in 2021. That may not sound like much, but it'll amount to $3.8 trillion in total.
With a spending boom and flexible work increasing post-pandemic, businesses will grow their IT teams to remain competitive. But what if there was another way? There are more efficient and flexible options to ensure a secure digital workplace, reduce down-time and increase productivity.
Here's how you can provide work-from-home support by outsourcing to managed services experts.
Flexible resourcing
It's clear that agility and business continuity are more valuable than ever. So, there's a strong argument for keeping your IT resources as scalable as possible. Salaried employees aren't easily scalable, but small teams can quickly become inundated with support tickets — the average sits at around 492 per month. With burnout on the rise, realistic workloads are a requirement.
If you outsource to a managed service provider (MSP), you bridge the gap between a small team and adequate tech support. That way, you're investing in more flexible cashflow.
With an MSP, your business won't be relying on one or two people to handle security, maintenance and optimisation. For what often amounts to less than a full-time salary, you'll get access to an entire team of specialists working to secure and maintain your remote environment.
Find the right provider they’ll take the time to learn your business goals, using that information to tailor their services to your organisation's requirements.
Expert guidance
Flexibility isn't the sole reason to choose an MSP over a new staff member. One of the most significant benefits is the fact that you get to work with a team that has a close working partnership with your cloud provider.
As a result, they're more likely to identify the areas in which you’re not using the platform as efficiently as you could be. They'll also be trained in the platform's best practices when it comes to security and maintenance. Chances are, if one of your remote employees raises a support ticket, an experienced HelpDesk advisor will have seen the problem hundreds of times before.
If your ultimate goal is going cloud-native, some MSPs can chart a realistic roadmap to get you there. Ideally, they'll have the partnerships and hybrid cloud experience necessary to avoid abandoning legacy line-of-business applications in the process.
Cost-efficiency
In some cases, an MSP's close relationship with a cloud provider can turn into discounts for their clients. That's just one short-term way that managed services can improve your cloud ROI, though.
Aside from improving the efficiency of your platform usage, it's worth thinking about cost-per-ticket when it comes to supporting remote staff. Don't ignore opportunity cost when doing so. Leaving aside the question of burnout and its effect on productivity, what high-value work could your small IT team be doing if an MSP was handling day-to-day support?
Evolving responsibilities
It may seem counterintuitive, but a smaller IT team will actually provide better work-from-home support to your employees. Give your in-house experts more time to focus on valuable IT tasks that have a direct impact on the bottom line, and an outsourced team of experts to support them. They won't have to tread water to keep up — they'll leave repetitive, low-value tasks in their wake.
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