As your business grows, sales revenue and IT resources grow with it. Your internal IT personnel need time to perform server maintenance, upgrades and new system installations. If IT personnel are constantly interrupted, they can’t provide the necessary support for critical systems. But did you know you can outsource your help desk to provide fast, affordable support for both customers and internal staff?
Faster Response
Whether you are providing internal IT support or technical support for customers, you need fast response times to keep all of your users happy. With outsourced help desk support, you can provide a central phone number for users to call for quick response times. If additional support is needed, the help desk can then call your in-house administrator(s) to fix more critical issues. The user gets a quick response for technical issues and your IT personnel are only alerted if more critical issues are found.
Reduced, Fixed Cost
It costs big money to hire staff, pay benefits and create working space for new personnel. Outsourced IT charges a flat rate to support your infrastructure. You also avoid the cost of sick days, vacation and paid time off. You also have a help desk that is available around-the-clock, so you don’t have to pay overtime or increased fees for extended employee hours. Most businesses have a technology budget that fits current sales revenue. Outsourced help desk resources also let you scale these costs with current revenue trends even when these trends are seasonal.
Expert IT Support Knowledge
Outsourced help desk support usually has a variety of personnel with several different skill sets. Many businesses need someone to address late-night staff issues. The help desk specialist can assist in helping the user set up a printer, fix a login problem or change a limited amount of system settings.
Your outsourced help desk can also provide you with a list of issues and phone calls handled throughout the month, so IT managers can identify common issues, and make systems more efficient in the future
Cost, convenience and expertise are the three main benefits you get with an outsourced IT help desk. You can also get detailed reports that help you determine which areas of your network and infrastructure fail the most, or need upgrading. Outsourced resources let your staff manage more critical issues and hardware, so they aren’t interrupted constantly by minor system installations and issues. Overall, the benefits far outweigh the cost when outsourcing your help desk.
As accounting software technology specialists, we don’t provide outsourced IT services. In fact, we outsource our own IT support, because it just makes so much sense, and we have found providers we can really rely on. If you are looking for a referral, please give us a call.We are here to help you improve your business operations in any way we can.
This is an excerpt from our Technologist Newsletter. You can find more issues of The Technologist here.