Efficiency is at the heart of any successful business. IT Outsourcing provides businesses the leverage to focus on their core competencies instead of worrying about their IT infrastructure or data management, for instance. Through this, productivity is achieved while lowering overhead costs.
There are many advantages to IT outsourcing apart from increased productivity and efficiency and cost control. These benefits include regular monitoring and maintenance of your IT environment, access to the most advanced technologies, and more.
Before you hop on the IT outsourcing train, you need to take some factors into consideration to ensure seamless integration of your IT service provider into your workflow and organization.
1. On-Shore Staff Morale
When a company decides to outsource a part or all its IT functions to a third-party service provider, staff morale may be affected. Therefore, it’s important to properly communicate the reasons behind the decision, as well as the short-term and long-term goals that can be achieved through IT outsourcing.
By ensuring that your on-shore staff understands the need to outsource IT processes, and how it can benefit the company, you can ascertain their compliance and cooperation. Let them know that outsourcing IT support services does not mean that their role in the company is in jeopardy. By giving them all the information they need, they can properly assess where they stand in the company as tenured or regular employees.
2. Operational Control and Governance
Some may argue that operational control is lost when companies outsource IT services. While some companies are perfectly content to hand over control of non-core business functions such as IT support or IT helpdesk, others prefer to retain full control of all business functions.
Assess how much control you want to retain over the IT support operations, and establish a framework with your outsourcing company. This ensures that there’s a clear understanding between your company and outsourced IT support management about operational control and governance. This framework will also help you develop a healthy business relationship with a clear understanding of roles, responsibilities, and expectations among all involved.
3. Confidentiality and Security
Your IT support partner will be given access to company information and customer data. Assess the types and amount of sensitive information that you need to share with your IT support company for them to function as the IT service desk department of your company.
Determine what measures the outsourcing company will take to ensure confidentiality and security of your company’s systems, information, and customer data.
4. Communication and Collaboration
Communication and collaboration is one of the leading concerns in outsourcing. It could be that you’re outsourcing your IT support to an off-shore location with a different time zone. It could also be that because it’s a third-party company, communication barriers exist simply because it’s a different company with a different work culture. Either way, there will be communication barriers in terms of time, language, culture, and background.
However, these barriers can be broken and issues can be addressed. Most outsourcing companies train their managers and staff in multi-cultural sensitivities and language to overcome communication challenges. This helps bridge the gap between your company and the IT support provider.
Put all agreements in writing, and take minutes of the meeting every time one is held. This provides both parties a document to get back to should there be anything they want to double check or clarify.
5. Quality of Work
Outsourcing your IT support can result in a greater quality of service. It’s important to remember that most outsourcing companies have been providing external IT support services for other clients, so they have experience in the field.
Furthermore, they already have a roster of employees that specialize in IT support and customer service. Most outsourcing companies provide language and culture training to ensure top quality of service.
In addition to manpower, outsourcing companies also have access to the latest technological advancements to ensure efficiency and productivity.
Companies can’t be as efficient and productive as they want to be if they choose to do everything internally. Outsourcing is now gaining ground, given the benefits and advantages it poses to businesses and organizations.
When outsourcing your IT support project, it’s important to assess your short-term and long-term goals and create a framework from which to base daily operations to ensure that both parties have clear expectations from each other.
Through IT support outsourcing, you can focus on providing your customers the best products and services and gain competitive advantage. You can reallocate this capital to grow your business and generate more revenue because you’re spending less on this specific function of your company
Don’t get left behind by your competitors. Outsource your IT support to experts in the field.
