Every business hits a point at which growth is outpacing the IT support your team can provide. Whether that means servers aren’t being provisioned quickly enough for new projects or you’re falling behind on security measures, you are feeling the tech debt differently each day with ongoing limitations in bandwidth. While one option is always to hire more IT professionals, this can be difficult and time-consuming at best and impossible in some parts of the country, depending on your budget.
Fortunately, there are high-quality IT services professionals available who are fully vetted and well trained in the latest security and technology platforms. Working with a managed IT services in Denver often means you have access to exceptional talent at a fraction of the cost of hiring these individuals outright. There is a wide range of managed IT services providers in the marketplace, making it crucial to find the right fit for your business. Here are the key decision points you’ll need in place to ensure your IT provider meshes well with internal teams and delivers true value back to your business.
1. Are You Ready to Relinquish Some—or All—Control?
Managed IT services providers offer a wide range of service models—from fully managed, where you essentially outsource your IT department, to individual tasks, such as server maintenance and data storage.
Understanding your risk tolerance and internal talent pool and deciding where to draw the line between your team and your IT services provider will help ensure you’re working with the right team to supplement your needs.
2. How Quickly Will You Scale Your Business?
If you’re looking for slow but steady growth, it may be better to maintain core functions internally, and only outsource part of your needs.
Alternatively, quick growth and scaling are best accomplished with a full-service managed IT services provider at your side. Not only can they provide greater depth of knowledge through a broader layer of support engineers, but an IT partner can offer valuable advice as you’re prepping for a growth phase. This can take a variety of forms, including outsourced CIO support and executive-level insight and oversight from an individual who has “been there, done that” in your industry or a related industry.
3. Is Your Current IT Team Feeling Overwhelmed?
If your tech staff is overloaded with a multitude of tiny tasks taking away all their time for creativity and long-term strategy, then your business can suffer. Offloading some of these daily support tasks to a managed IT services provider often allows internal tech teams to enjoy better quality of life within their work day.
This is also true if your internal team is feeling overwhelmed and overstretched from working far outside their comfort zones. Tasking a front-end UX designer with network maintenance may be a stretch too far for that individual. Fortunately, an IT services partner should have knowledgeable networking pros who can fill in any knowledge gaps for your team.
4. Are You Confident Your IT Leaders Fully Understand the Future Tech Landscape?
Acknowledging that your internal IT leaders are not seeing the full potential isn’t a failure for those individuals or your business. Instead, making the decision to seek external expertise shows their good judgment in supplementing their knowledge. Having an external team who has time, energy, and resources available to focus on future-casting can only benefit your business both now and in the future. With an IT services partner with deep knowledge of your industry, you gain wisdom and clarity needed to implement best practices in your industry and beyond.
An IT partner often works with a wider range of businesses, allowing you and your team greater insight into how technology will evolve in your space. Leveraging this information across multiple industries, while having the knowledge to apply it to your unique needs, requires time, effort, and energy that can be in short supply if you’re enmeshed in the day-to-day operations of your business.
5. Are You Overpaying for Some Services?
It’s not uncommon for companies to acquire a range of technical service providers organically over time. While this may have made sense during a time of incremental growth, evaluating your full vendor landscape and seeing where consolidation can occur is well worth the effort required. It may surprise you to find some services that made sense several years ago are either no longer used or could be delivered more effectively by a full-service IT provider.
Making the decision to invest in your business operations can be a significant commitment. However, you may discover additional efficiencies that reduce internal churn, accelerate new product development, and create a ripe opportunity for new ideas within your business.
When you take these five decisions to your leadership team, chances are you’ll find that consolidating your IT services with a single provider will make sense. Fortunately, the team at Resilient Managed Computer Services offers a complimentary initial consultation that will help you walk through some of these decisions, determining how you can define a positive outcome for your business. Contact us today at 303-371-7214 to see why Denver companies have been trusting us to provide superior managed IT services since 1983.