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Co-Managed IT Management

6 Signs Your IT Department Needs Outside Help

Technology is an integral part of all businesses, no two ways about it. And that means that organizations with internal IT departments face an uphill challenge of keeping up with IT demands, from big-picture planning to daily support.

In a dream world, a business would have abundant financial resources to invest on well-trained staff and IT tools to adequately monitor, manage, automate and support it’s IT infrastructure. But we all know that this is out of reach to most small and mid-size businesses, which means that the well-oiled machine they’re dreaming of is just utopia.

Reality is that while they intend to do a stellar job, the high work volume and lack of tools means that  IT departments spend most of its time focused on fixing employee requests via e-mail and performing manual tasks, instead of focusing on essential functions, such as strengthening cybersecurity, moving data to the Cloud, maintaining systems patches, and establishing business continuity/disaster recovery plans.

Over time, IT departments risk of suffering outdated technical skills and technology becoming unreliable and outdated.

If your IT staff is thinking the following, they (and your business) might benefit from outsourced help:

1. I am busy and need help

IT administrators must be on top of every IT issues facing a company. As a result, your IT manager and his or her staff would think they are too busy, despite getting a few results being busy.

The truth is they do need help. The department wants to be productive but lacks the tools to have a full, real-time picture and centrally manage all parts of the IT infrastructure.

2. I am tired of people who come to my desk asking for immediate help.

IT personnel must respond to employee requests regarding one software or a system patch. They have a lot on their plates, making their tasks seem Herculean. The moment your IT manager becomes tired of receiving these requests, get outside help at once.

3. A system update is challenging.

Since the IT staff must update the systems one-by-one manually, they find the task of doing this quite challenging. Couple this with securing devices across the company’s IT infrastructure, and you have a worn out IT team.

4. “I Worry My IT Skills Set may fall behind others.”

This is one of the biggest fears of IT managers, and they are always thinking about this. If your IT manager thinks his or her technology skill set might be outdated without help in sight, your company’s IT is the one that suffers most.

5. The business can’t afford me getting sick or going on vacation.

Technology issues don’t take time off so, if IT staff can barely keep up to keep things afloat, what would your business do the day they get sick or goes on vacation?

6. I want to prove my value by justifying the time I spend on projects.

IT departments feel pressure from the boss to do more with the same limited budget & headcount. Without an adequate system to track their time and keep projects organized, IT staff cannot an audit of how productive they are and how resources and spent which helps the business keep it’s needs and priorities in check.

To protect against these and other issues, it’s advisable that business organizations utilize a co-managed IT service.

A co-managed IT service can be used to engineer, monitor, and develop content across an entire organization. This service gives businesses the benefit of working with their service providers to meet targets and enhance security layers.

Co-managed IT services do more than that. While we offer fully outsourced services, we also develop a co-managed service that is a middle ground between an internal IT department and outsourcing and bridges the IT gaps noted earlier.

With a co-managed IT service model, businesses have the option to keep their internal IT staff while still gaining access to our top-of-the-line IT tools. You can utilize these tools to manage and implement the best business practices.

With us, you can have on-demand access to our IT support team. We’ll help your IT department maintain and/or reduce the headcount while improving the capabilities of each member to manage and support the IT infrastructure.

All co-managed IT solutions are not created equal. But, an excellent co-managed service should have at least, these five key components:

  • IT Service Desk/Ticketing System to centralize and document all support requests, and keep track of the technician’s time.
  • Monitoring, Automation and Patching Software that provides real-time visibility of systems allows for automation of tasks, such as software patching, and alerts when something might not be working quite right.
  • IT Documentation Software to create a secure and centralized repository of all information about the devices, applications, passwords, etc.
  • Real-time Reporting and Analytics Software that consolidates all key data from the other components into performance indicators/dashboards to gain high-level insights about things, such as system/network health, ticket volume/type, and IT staff productivity.
  • On-demand help-desk ticket escalation to the third party when ticket volume and complexity requires, or when an IT staff member goes on vacation.

If your IT Department is ready to stop dealing with daily fires and get the tools to truly focus in strategic IT projects that will add true value to the business, schedule a call with a member of our team

Envision Consulting

Envision Consulting

We started Envision Consulting for businesses that share our passion for building long- term and healthy relationships. While we might be technology experts, we’ve always known that trust, reliability and looking after a client’s best interest are paramount to succeeding in business. But in 2001 and to this day, there were few managed IT providers available that embodied our customer-centric values. There were countless support companies more interested in reacting to issues than paving the road forward for clients, making it far too difficult to build long-term relationships. We felt a strong pull to make something different, and we did.