Got questions about IT support providers? We thought you might. So here are the answers to four of the questions we are asked most often about what IT support providers do, how they work, and what they offer.
As a business grows in revenue and operation size, running it becomes more complex and there are more IT considerations that need to be made. As you continue to take on more staff to help keep pace with the competition and fulfil your growing customer requirements, your technical needs are only going to grow.
From new business applications and comms systems to changes in your manufacturing and project management processes, as your business evolves, your software, hardware, and overall tech requirements will too. And as this all develops, you can either manage all of this in-house or you can outsource it to an IT support provider.
Q1: What is outsourced IT support?
Outsourced IT support is where a business, like yours, pays an external IT support company to handle all things tech. We’re talking integrations, hardware, cybersecurity, software updates, and just about everything else. If that’s the set-up you want. Think of companies like us as your defacto internal IT department.
An IT support provider employs a bunch of people to support your internal tech with queries and technical issues, provide admin support, resolve security concerns, and manage the system and network upkeep. Basically, we’ve got your IT operations covered.
You’ve got a couple of options when it comes to finding the right support. You can either outsource the entire department out to a provider or you can get specific support for highly specialised tasks like security consulting, integrations, and installations to an IT support company and then handle the rest yourself.
For small to medium businesses (SMBs), the former is usually the best option. It is always best to have IT services carried out by a team of dedicated, experienced experts. If you have that resource in-house, that’s great. Folks like us will be around for support when you need it. But if you need to focus your efforts elsewhere, an IT support provider can take the stress and time off of your hands.
Special mention: for larger and enterprise companies, we also offer licence purchases.
Q2: Who provides outsourced IT support services?
This can range from enterprise-level multi-national organisations of offer IT support as an additional service to their main offering through to small businesses, like ours, whose entire focus is to provide IT support service to SMBs. A lot of companies in this boat will refer to themselves as Managed Service Providers (or MSP)s.
Feature: What is IT managed services? And does my business need it?
MSPs will act as generalist providers. They will take full responsibility for all of your IT operations and be split into different departments to handle different parts of the operation. For example, our company includes teams of:
- Engineers – to build and manage networks and systems
- Services – to work on support tickets (usually the largest department in an IT support company)
- Projects – to cover installations, wider process management
- Sales & marketing – to manage client acquisition
Q3: How much does outsourcing to an IT Support provider cost?
As you can imagine, there are a lot of variables when it comes to calculating the cost. It’s not one blanket price for any business. That said, the cost of fully outsourcing your IT operations to an MSP or IT support company will depend on a few things, including:
- How many assets you need
- Software requirements
- Employees and hardware requirements
- Installations and integration inclusions
- Complexity of your needs
You can learn more about our audit and proposal process here.
Ultimately, it is far cheaper to outsource everything to one specialist team than it is to work with disparate companies, contractors, or businesses on the odd occasion that something doesn’t work or your internal team is beyond capacity. Prices will vary in-line with market conditions, but working with an IT support company to cover all of your IT needs allows you to budget for one stable payment every month. Much easier than balancing budgets with the IT support needs of your business.
In terms of managing cost and budget, any prospective IT support company you speak with should provide you with a clear breakdown of ongoing maintenance and support costs (monthly/yearly payments) as well as individual project costs, labour costs, hardware costs, and licencing fees. If your prospective providers don’t provide this as standard, it’s worth considering looking elsewhere.
Q4: How is IT support delivered? How does it all work?
So first we have the initial onboarding process. For us, it takes about 6-8 weeks from you signing the dotted line to all systems going live (and you going live on our 24/7 support system). You can find out the full process of getting started with totality services here.
Once you are ready, from your side the way it works is that you can post a support ticket at any time and our team will be right on it. On the logistical side, we put specialised software on your network to monitor and control your IT assets. It allows us to provide remote support for your entire system whenever you need it. Although we do also offer in-person IT support across London.
Your chosen IT support company is there to resolve day-to-day issues, help with installations, and provide security consultations. Support tickets are designated to engineers in the IT company and assigned by priority with top priority focusing on security breaches and critical functionality problems.
If you’re ready to make a start, get in touch with our team to get the ball rolling on your outsourced IT support program.