When was the last time your IT expert went on vacation, and you didn’t feel worried without them around? Technology is the life force of your organization. When things don’t work correctly (or even break), having someone there to fix the issues is critical. This makes it difficult for IT personnel ever to take a break.
But there is a solution.
Enter supplemental IT support, like our IT support in Seattle.
What is Supplemental IT Support?
Many people associate outsourced IT with fully managed IT support. However, that’s not the only option. One under-utilized function of managed service providers is that of supplemental IT support.
Supplemental IT support is an option that provides businesses with assistance and backup for its existing IT team. This could range anywhere from helping with large projects, balancing workloads, or acting as additional support for vacations or unforeseen circumstances.
Why Do Businesses Need Supplemental IT Support?
If you employ any type of IT team, you may be wondering why you need supplemental IT support. Especially if you have more than one individual to count on, vacations or absences may not be as anxiety-riddled. However, even with an experienced team of IT experts, having additional support can be helpful.
Benefits of Supplemental IT Support
Here are just a few of the benefits of using supplemental IT support.
Decreased Stress
Utilizing supplemental IT support can take some of the stress off of your internal IT team. Research shows that high levels of stress can negatively impact an individual in many ways. For example, time management and focus can both be adversely affected by stress. And this can lead to decreased performance.
When your IT team has a backup team of experts to rely on, they can better balance their demanding workloads and, in turn, decrease their stress.
On top of that, if your IT department consists of one expert, they can feel at ease knowing everything doesn’t fall on their shoulders. They can go on vacation without worrying about the organization’s tech. They can call in backup if they have to take a sick day or medical leave.
In the end, this reduction of stress will lead to improved productivity and effectiveness in your organization.
Improved Job Satisfaction
A side effect of reduced stress, supplemental IT support can also improve job satisfaction. Some top factors that affect job satisfaction include a good work-life balance and a low-stress environment. By shifting some of the immense pressure from your IT department’s back to supplemental IT support, you’ll be helping your employees find greater job satisfaction.
For example, as we mentioned above, your IT personnel will be able to feel comfortable taking a vacation. This contributes to an improved work-life balance. Or maybe your outsourced IT team takes care of issues during off-hours. Your in-house team can now find more time to enjoy things outside of work.
And we all know satisfied employees are better employees and less likely to quit, in-turn reducing your costs of hiring and training new ones.
Increased Pool of Knowledge
Another of the big benefits of supplemental IT support is access to knowledge. Many small to mid-sized businesses can only afford small IT departments — maybe even only one person. The downside to this is that you are limited to that team’s or person’s knowledge.
Technology is increasingly complex and sophisticated. Even the most experienced IT professional doesn’t know everything.
By partnering with a managed IT provider for supplemental IT, you’re broadening the resources at your disposal. Providers typically employ large numbers of IT experts. For example, here at Executech, we have over 150 experienced technicians.
This means that if your in-house IT department ever runs into an issue they are unfamiliar with, they can call on additional resources.
Organizational Safeguards
If your in-house IT team consists of one person, having additional support can safeguard your organization from being locked out or unable to access your technology. We don’t like to think about this, but unfortunately, there are a number of reasons your IT expert may unexpectedly be unavailable.
And if this one person was the only employee in the organization who had access to passwords and your network, an unexpected leave can cause many problems.
If you have backup IT help, you can avoid this whole situation.
Cost-Effective
Last but definitely not least, supplemental IT support can also be extremely cost-effective. Hiring full-time employees is costly. Not only do you have to invest in training upfront, but there are also salary, benefits, bonuses, and more costs you’ll have to undertake.
You might have more IT work than one full-time employee can handle, but not enough for two. Or maybe you can’t afford a second employee. Either way, you can supplement your IT department and solve your problem.
You can arrange for additional support for however long you need, and for whatever tasks you need. If you want your IT team to handle the more intense, complex tasks and your outsourced team to handle more basic, help-desk tasks, great! And you can choose whether you need two hours a week of help, or twenty. It’s all customizable and up to you.
On top of that, you can easily scale up or down services. If one of your internal employees is going on vacation, you can add hours for that month. Or you might determine you don’t need as many hours as you initially thought and decide to downscale.
Conclusion
In the end, many organizations believe that if they have internal IT, there is no need for outsourced IT services. However, there are many advantages to reinforcing your in-house IT department with supplemental IT support. Take a look at your business and see if it could benefit from some IT backup.
