4 Signs your UK Business Needs to Outsource its IT Support in London

There’s no two ways about it: Your business needs reliable IT support in order to keep things running efficiently, to innovate and to stay ahead of the competition. The problem is that as your company expands, or even simply tries to keep up with the rapidly evolving tech world, IT support presents a series of challenges your business may struggle to overcome. What do you do when you are faced with increasing staff costs, a lack of expertise regarding new technology, managing a growing number of tech assets and aligning your IT roadmap to the business strategy? It can all be a major headache your current IT team won’t be able to manage, which is why you need to recognise the signs that you should consider outsourcing your IT support.

If you recognise any of the following four signs in your UK business, outsourced IT support in London may be the solution:

1 - Productivity is dropping due to an increase in tech issues

As your business grows, it will need more and more IT support, and your in-house IT team can become stretched and unable to meet the demands it is faced with. Outdated devices, sluggish servers, flawed systems and a clunky network can result in outages or tech failures that disrupt business continuity, and it can take time to repair them: time you can’t afford to lose. When machine management becomes a constant break-fix scenario, your business is already on the back foot, unable to invest resources into innovation because they are all focused on (barely) keeping afloat.

Outsourcing your IT support, on the other hand, means you can avail of a specialised team of experts 24/7, acting as a virtual CTO to not only handle all tech support issues remotely (or on-site), but to operate a proactive machine management approach to your IT infrastructure.

They can also perform an IT audit to assess your current capabilities and where you need to make smart investments in order to build an IT roadmap that will help you meet current tech demands and future-proof your business.

That doesn’t have to mean an IT infrastructure overhaul. Your outsourced IT support team can provide a consulting service to help build a plan in line with your overall business strategy to prioritise the business-critical processes you need to keep running at all costs, and implement the upgrades you need here and elsewhere before they become outdated.

2 - IT support is costing you too much

Having an in-house IT team means a serious investment in permanent salaries and benefits, not to mention the risk of decreased productivity caused by holidays or sick leave. On top of that, even though you are paying out for permanent staff, they may not provide the all-round expertise needed to support your business.

IT support today can include a range of services that demand expertise, from basic system admin to email, to password management to ongoing monitoring and maintenance to integrating cloud computing, and finding a permanent team capable of handling all of this would require steep salaries.

On the other hand, outsourcing to an IT support service in London instead means you have a team of experts who can handle any and all aspects of your tech support, and because you can hire them on a flexible and scalable pay-as-you-go basis, you can control your spend as an OpEx cost, rather than a CapEx one. Whether you require an IT helpdesk, a consulting service to advise on and implement new tech investments, or on-site technical help, an outsourced IT team can provide the solutions with experienced and expert personnel, at a fraction of the cost of an in-house team.

A reputable IT support service can also provide cost savings in the form of volume licensing, passing on the savings they make in hardware and software purchasing to you.

3 - Your company is growing too fast for your IT to keep up

While expansion is obviously a very good thing, a sudden increase in the number of staff who need reliable and efficient IT support can leave your tech team, and your business, struggling to keep up with demand. An expanding user network, new and upgraded devices and increased demands on servers all become more complicated to the point where a single IT guy, or even a small team, may not be able to manage, leading to lengthy delays in maintenance, or implementation of new IT assets.

There is also the question of the expanded workload that comes with monitoring and maintaining hardware and software, and an increase in vulnerabilities that need to be patched, upgraded or replaced.

In such cases, rather than doubling your in-house IT team, or crossing your fingers and hoping they can manage with a hugely increased workload, the best option is to outsource to a dedicated IT support team who can provide a scalable solution.

They can up the number of hours or personnel needed to meet a surge in demand, ongoing expansion, or a specific IT project, so you can stop worrying about having the IT solutions you need, and continue to expand your business.

4 - You can’t be sure your cyber security is up to speed

Whether you have experienced a cyber security incident that threatened not only your business continuity but your compliance with data protection regulations such as GDPR, or if you just fear that your business may be vulnerable to malware or ransomware attacks, your IT support needs to be able to act to ensure all systems, networks and devices are secure. Faced with a dozen other daily tasks, your in-house IT team may struggle to not only get up to speed with the constantly-evolving world of cyber security, viruses and data management, which puts your business in real danger.

An outsourced IT support team in London with expertise in data protection can provide the round-the-clock monitoring and analysis your business needs to stay several steps ahead of hackers and other cyber threats, and keep you compliant with regulations.

Beginning with an initial security audit, they can assess the current status of your IT infrastructure security, identifying gaps, and advise on and implement the upgrades, response strategies and overall cyber security culture you need. They can also provide on and off-site backup of business-critical data and data recovery, should the unthinkable happen and you face a tech calamity.

Running a successful business efficiently is enough of a job without having to worry about whether your in-house IT team is up to the task of increased tech support. If you have begun to notice any of the above signs, it may be time to outsource your IT support to a team of dedicated and expert professionals who can provide every tech solution you need. They can not only provide 24/7 support across every aspect of your IT needs, they can also reduce the costs of keeping your hardware and software running at the level you require to stay ahead of the competition.

Get in touch with the team at Optimity to find out how we can help your business with a tailored, flexible and scalable outsourced IT solution, and get started by booking an IT audit with us:

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