Do you ever feel like your IT department isn’t able to keep up with your company’s demands? They struggle to find solutions while your systems are down, and even when you hire experts, they only specialize in one area. What if we told you there’s a better way to manage IT services for your company?
Having your in-house IT department partner with an IT consultant can solve a lot of your IT headaches. Read on to learn more about the benefits of working with an IT consulting service.
Use a Tiered Help Desk
One of the most significant benefits of working with an IT consulting service is that you can gain access to a tiered help desk. Using this model is a great way to make sure everything moves as smoothly and efficiently as possible. But it can be challenging to implement this model on your own, especially if you’re a smaller company.
A tiered help desk has several different levels of technicians that deal with various problems. The first level can handle basic “Have you turned it off and turned it back on again” kinds of questions. When those measures fail, the technician can pass the issue up the line to a technician with more experience and expertise.
Get Additional Expertise
On the subject of more expertise and experience, it can be hard to find IT workers who have a full range of knowledge with every technical issue. Most have a particular specialty they focus on, but they may not be as experienced resolving other problems. And if you’re running a small business, you likely can’t afford to hire a full team of expert-level technicians.
When you work with an IT consultant, you gain the benefit of the additional expertise without having to pay for the salary and benefits. These consultants can come from a range of backgrounds and have different specialties. At Ascendant, we have consultants who are experts in servers, network security, compliance standards, firewalls, and backup and recovery.
Get a Wider Breadth of Knowledge
Although it’s a good thing to have experts on hand when complex issues arise, you don’t always need expert-level guidance. Sometimes, you just need a full breadth of knowledge to help you solve the variety of problems that occur in IT work. But one person can only cover a certain amount of expertise.
IT consultant firms have large teams available to help cover a full range of technical knowledge. One person may have experience with the first three versions of a piece of software while another may have worked on the last four updates, and so on. This larger team can make sure you never have a technical issue no one knows how to solve.
Get a New Perspective
Even aside from additional expertise, having an outside perspective on your business operations can be very helpful. Too often, we tend to get in ruts where we do something one way because that’s how it was always done. It can be challenging to take a step back and evaluate what the best option truly is in a given situation.
An IT consulting firm has worked with dozens of other businesses, and they’re familiar with the best IT practices for your business. They can help give you a clearer perspective on what is and isn’t working in your company. And if something isn’t working, they can help you find a new, more efficient way to approach that particular process.
Reduce Your Downtime
When systems in your business go down, it’s frustrating for everyone involved.
Your employees can’t get their work done, your clients can’t get their product on time, your IT department is trying to find and fix the problem quickly, and you’re trying to manage everyone’s frustrations. Working with an IT consulting service can help reduce your downtime and keep everyone’s expectations in check.
If you only have one or two IT professionals working to restore your systems, it’s going to take much longer for you to get back online. An IT consulting firm can provide you with the IT workforce to get your systems back online much quicker. With a strong business network, you can focus on keeping your profits up and your customers happy.
Improve Productivity
When you’re trying to run a business, efficiency is the name of the game. If one of your systems is down, productivity drops for the whole company.
Decreasing your system downtime can help keep your productivity at peak levels. But it can also improve the overall productivity of your IT department. When your IT workers aren’t running around putting out fires all day, they can focus on updates, upgrades, and other preventative measures to make your company more secure and more efficient.
Automate Device Management
One great way to make your company more efficient is to automate your device management. Things like software updates shouldn’t have to take time out of employees’ workdays, but they do have to happen. Automating these processes can be a great way to make sure your system stays up to date without taking away from your productivity.
An IT consultant can help you get as many of your systems automated as possible. They can let you know about automation options you may never have heard of and provide you with the infrastructure support to put those computerized systems in place. At Ascendant, we can automate Microsoft patching, third party patching, antivirus measures, backup, remote access to workstations, and more.
Get 24/7 Help
If your company works outside of regular business hours, managing round-the-clock IT support can be tricky. You need someone who can be on hand if your server goes down in the middle of the night. But you don’t want to have to pay them extra to work an overnight shift or hire multiple shifts of IT professionals.
An IT consulting firm can handle the 24/7 support you need at a much lower cost. They can provide continuous monitoring and address issues that arise outside of business hours. You can rest easy knowing your company will continue to run smoothly, even in your sleep.
Increase Security
Cybersecurity is a crucial issue for any business today. Cyber attacks don’t discriminate between small and large companies, and what may be only an inconvenience for a larger company could spell disaster for a smaller business. You need to make sure your company is on the defense against these kinds of attacks.
An IT consulting service is well-versed in all the latest cybersecurity measures and cyber-attack methods. They can help your company spend resources, putting in protection systems that work. Their 24/7 vigilance means your company will never be left vulnerable.
Manage Big Data
Having access to big data can help your company work more efficiently and better meet customer needs. You can figure out what’s working in your company and what isn’t. Even what your customers are looking for in your industry. But managing that data requires a secure IT infrastructure to prevent data silos.
The right IT consulting firm can help you to reference your internal data against external data from your industry. They can also tap into government databases and mobile patterns to get you the best available information. They can understand trends that will help your business operate more effectively than ever.
Improve Employee Satisfaction
If you want to grow a healthy business, one of the things you have to be able to do is attract and retain valuable employees. There are a lot of factors that go into those efforts, but part of that is employee satisfaction. If you want to have excellent employee satisfaction, you need a reliable IT department.
If you’re hiring employees outside the IT department, they won’t want to work for a company that’s always fighting with computer problems. If you’re hiring in the IT department, having a reliable, IT consulting company on your side could be a significant recruitment point. The culture of growth and cutting-edge innovation that can come along with working with a company like Ascendant can bring in employees looking to work on the frontier of your industry.
Get Better-Trained Employees
No matter what you’re aiming to improve in your company, having better-trained employees can be an essential step in accomplishing those goals. But training takes time and expertise, and you only have so many resources to dedicate. Why not hand off some of that training responsibility to a team of technology experts?
An IT consulting firm can help train your employees in cybersecurity and basic troubleshooting. Training can help keep your company more secure since you’re only as secure as your weakest link. It can also help increase productivity and empower your employees since they’ll know how to manage some fundamental technology problems themselves.
Delegate Management Responsibilities
Any good manager will tell you the key to success is delegation. You can’t accomplish more as a team if you’re running around trying to do everyone else’s jobs. Delegation allows you to focus on the thing that’s most important – running your business – while others handle the less weighty tasks.
When you work with an IT consulting company, you can delegate the management of your IT department. Delegation can be especially helpful if you aren’t an especially tech-savvy person yourself. You can hand off IT management to the experts and focus on the front end of your company.
Reduce Costs
Having a few in-house IT workers is a good idea, but it gets expensive in a hurry. You have to pay their salary and training costs, pay for benefits, and give them a budget for new equipment, education, and travel stipends to go to conferences. This is an essential cost, but what if we told you there’s a way to trim it down?
An IT consulting company can cut a lot of your costs associated with maintaining a full in-house IT department. You don’t have to worry about paying full salaries or benefits, and you don’t have to pay for their training and travel. Instead, you pay the consulting company a relatively small fee, and together you and their other clients help to cover those expenses, saving you a lot on your bottom line.
Get a Customized Plan
“But wait,” we hear you saying, “I don’t need full 24/7 monitoring. I’m a small company, and I just need a little extra expertise or help sometimes.” Not to worry – IT consulting firms don’t work at one fixed price.
Firms like Ascendant allow you to set up a customized plan that meets your company’s needs – no more, no less. You can find a balance between what your company needs and what you can afford. And you won’t wind up paying extra for services you never use.
Focus on Core Business Functions
Essentially what all of these benefits allow you to do is better focus on your core business function. IT is an essential part of any modern business, but so is accounting, advertising, human resources, product research and development, and more. Your IT requirements shouldn’t take over all of the time you dedicate to your business.
With the help of an IT consulting firm, you can return attention and resources to the original business you set out to run. You can develop new product ideas or work on marketing plans. Your focus will stay on what you’re passionate about without the demands and distractions of how to make it function.
Discover the Benefits of an IT Consultant
Working with an IT consultant can be a great way to increase your productivity while lowering your costs. You can reduce your system downtime, get access to a broader range of expertise, and find new ways to optimize your business processes. You can also ensure your employees get the care and training they need to make sure your business continues to operate at peak performance.
If you’d like to start working with the best IT consultants, check out the rest of our site at Ascendant Technologies. We provide unlimited IT support with New Jersey’s best IT consultants, network engineers, and IT project managers. Contact us today to get started with the smartest IT solution for your business.