Who do you call if you have an IT question? Is it a dedicated technical support person, or is just someone two cubicles down who is good with computers? If you do have an IT help desk, can they roll out new technology initiatives, or do they just fix the stuff you already use?
In our experience, many organizations with less than 100 users often don’t have a full-time IT person or dedicated in-house help desk. That can be a problem for any organization trying to improve user productivity. But we also know that having an IT support help desk is not enough. A help desk can fix stuff when it breaks, but can’t do much to move your company forward.
Whether in house or outsourced, your IT support needs to offer strategic services. Let’s look at the ways an outsourced managed technology provider can help with both help desk services and strategic technology planning.
HELP FOR THE HELP DESK
In smaller businesses, or those at an early stage, IT support often falls to the most tech-savvy member of staff. This may work for a while, but as systems become more complex the IT support will either evolve to the point it is beyond the individual’s skill set or the workload becomes too large, and their day job suffers.
In larger organizations, an IT department might exist but often gets tied down fixing problems and providing user support. The business owner wants this team to be focused on developing the IT strategy, but the IT team just does not have the bandwidth. To ensure a business runs smoothly and maintains growth, few things are as important as having the right IT staffing and systems in place.
GET STRATEGIC HELP
An established technology service enables adoption of new technology while keeping your existing service operating at peak efficiency. Even companies leading digital transformation in the marketplace may not have the resources to deploy transformative tech in-house. The right outsourced technology resource, however, can create a technology roadmap that offers new capabilities to solve your IT issues.
For example, if you’re thinking of adopting new cloud or Virtual Desktop services to support your remote workers, an outsourced IT service with experience in technology management will have already reviewed, tested, vetted and deployed a variety of software services.
I.T. IS COMPLICATED
Unless your company’s core business is in technology services, building an in-house IT team is an impossible task. Recruiting, training, supporting, managing and providing the necessary equipment are all expensive. If your core business is not IT, do you know how to provide a structured career path for qualified IT professionals?
The capabilities of a business entirely focused of IT, with multiple team members at various experience levels, is going to be greater than you can hope to assemble yourself. A dedicated support team oversees all kinds of workplace technology, ranging from laptops, to servers to business-critical software applications.
It is difficult for an in-house IT help desk staff to understand the big picture when they are busy reacting to service breakdowns. Unfortunately, the help desk is often seen as a support service and not as a core business function, so IT help desk teams tend to only focus on completing their tasks.
When IT help desk is delivered as part of a larger technology management solutions, you have more opportunities to closely align those services with the business as a whole. Which means delivering quality IT services with an eye towards improving your bottom line.
The Elevity Service Desk is just part of a fully managed technology solution from Elevity. We layer service desk support with our technology strategy, security and solutions to give organizations peace of mind and a strategic advantage in the market. To learn more, reach out to our team of technology experts and see if engaging a managed technology and help desk service is right for your business.