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Author: James Eglin
The recent economic turmoil has put a great deal of pressure on companies to examine ways to reduce costs throughout all areas of their business-and Information Technology (IT) is no exception. Although most organizations have implemented some level of technology to improve IT staff productivity, the cost of maintaining and supporting computers and networks as well as ensuring continual end-user satisfaction can be challenging and continues to increase.
Fortunately, the IT support marketplace has responded and there are now a number of attractive and cost-effective alternatives for small and mid-size businesses to dramatically reduce their IT budgets while at the same time improve the uptime, effectiveness and satisfaction of their investments in information technology and infrastructure.
The most popular methods to providing IT support to small and mid-sized businesses now comprises three varied IT support models.
The first model is to invest in the building of an internal IT Department. Unfortunately, this option is the most costly to initially deploy as well as maintain. Most organizations will typically need to budget about $120,000 per IT support professional. In the Washington, DC area marketplace, an experienced senior IT engineer will command a salary of $80,000-$100,000 per year. Add in benefits ($10,000), overhead ($5,000), on-going technical training and certification ($5,000), recruitment fees ($15,000) and software tools and equipment ($10,000), this investment quickly escalates. Given the high levels of demand for quality IT staff in our metro area, locating, managing, retaining and developing your IT staff can often be a difficult and time consuming process. In addition, based on industry standard IT staff turnover rates, you should be prepared to restart your recruitment process every two years!
Another option is to simply outsource the support and management of your IT department to a sole proprietor or independent IT consultant. Although this option may initially be attractive due to the perceived low cost of entry, this decision is more often than not very difficult to make successful. But, the good news is that these individuals can readily be found on the Internet, or through a referral from a friend or business associate.
Upon initial review, their resumes may contain all the “buzz words” from the IT support industry, but their experience and skill-sets are very often focused on just a few technologies or products. More importantly, their overall lack or resources often does not permit their operations to scale to meet the cyclical needs of your business. Furthermore, they have limited capabilities to respond to the ongoing demands of more than one customer at one time. Lastly, they very rarely have made the substantial investment in infrastructure management tools and applications and are unable to offer Service Level Agreements guaranteeing a specified delivery of services. With this solution, industry experience has shown that you should be prepared to churn through several team members before securing the one you feel can properly support your operations.
Another solution that has substantially increased in favor is the process of outsourcing of your technical support needs to a dedicated IT Support company or Managed Services Provider. This option has now been proven to result in savings that exceed 30-50% of the cost of the in-house model while simultaneously offering higher levels of service and responsiveness than either of the other mentioned IT support models.
As with any service offerings, there are many variations on this support model. As such, your company will need to be diligent in your partner selection and ensure that they offer a comprehensive and complete service offering that can respond and scale to meet your current and future technical support needs and requirements.
Most experts recommend that you choose a company that offers fixed-fee monthly pricing, utilizes a team of computer professionals that perform specialized tasks and roles, has employees that have been awarded multiple technical certifications, leverages industry leading technologies to monitor and manage your infrastructure, has documented best practices processes and methodologies, performs regularly scheduled onsite visits at your location, offers unlimited remote support and is a trusted partner that can recommend and successfully implement technology that is consistent with your business initiatives.
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/information-technology-articles/it-support-options-for-your-growing-business-2878496.html
About the Author:James M. Eglin, Jr. Partner SysArc, Inc.
11300 Rockville Pike Rockville, MD 20852
301.231.5252
SysArc offers a comprehensive selection of dependable infrastructure IT support services to a wide variety of industry verticals throughout Virginia, Maryland and Washington DC.