The "Tech Age," has been upon us for quite some time. Most of us feel pretty comfortable with the everyday task of operating our smartphones and tablets, but business technology is a whole other obstacle.
We’ve been helping companies figure out business technology for over 30 years now, and there are 3 technical support options we see that greatly benefit our clients’ daily work lives.
Let's take a look at the 3 outsourced IT services that your company needs today!
1. Managed Workstations
Computers require regular maintenance for two reasons. The first is longevity. Just like a car, your computer’s life can be extended with proper maintenance. The other is security. For most of us, knowing when and what to update can get convoluted – is it the antivirus or software, or maybe the whole server that needs a patch?
We know that trying to understand the who, what, where, when and why of updates is a job all its own. With an outsourced IT company, you'll have an entire team who’s dedicated to keeping you in tip-top shape. They not only keep track of updates and security but they’re also monitoring your whole system all day, every day.
They’re also intimately familiar with your network and how everything is running. So, when you say that something’s not right, they’ll be able to solve it much faster since they’ve been managing it all along. This limits frustration and gets your employees back to work in no time.
Let the managed IT service provider worry about your workstations running on all cylinders so that you can concentrate on running your business.
2. Hardware or Software as a Service (HaaS/SaaS)
What kind of technology do you rely on daily? Are your servers in-house? What about anything on a pay-as-you-go platform? – Think: software or email subscriptions. A major component of success in business is the tools you use to support productivity.
What would you do if, without warning, any one of those programs stopped responding? Or if you are considering moving anything to the Cloud, what's your first step?
This is where your IT support provider comes into play. From start to finish, your IT provider is your guide. First things first, they'll advise on picking the right product(s) and services for your company's goals. Followed by mapping and conducting the proper configuration and migration. Then they'll round out the service by providing you with the first line of support when issues arise. And if the issue is complex, they contact the vendor and work to resolve it so you don’t have to.
Outside of ensuring support and proper migration, your IT provider will proactively maintain the system. This keeps you up-to-date with the latest versions, security measures, and reduces the chance that the system will go down.
3. First Line of Support: Help Desk
The primary purpose of the help desk is to provide quick assistance for your IT problems. If you or your employees have any issue - big or small - the help desk is your first responder. From there, the help desk has resources available to them to resolve just about any issue that may occur. We like to think about them as IT Superheroes (wink wink).
The help desk is also able to identify patterns of issues your company may be having. The help desk is your front line of support, but they also track the issues that are being reported.
Once they spot a pattern, they jump into proactive work. They're able to identify and fix the cause of the reoccurring issue before it becomes a major problem. Proactive work helps your company avoid serious production-halting consequences. The help desk does this because IT Superheroes dislike recurring problems as much as you do.
Good news is, using a help desk is easy. Most IT support companies offer help desk services, but service levels vary. For a benchmark as you’re investigating options, calls into our help desk are answered by an engineer in 30 seconds or less. And 90% of tickets submitted to our help desk are closed same-day. We also offer on-call assistance all day, every day, because Superheroes are always there for you.
Also, ask about options to reach their help desk. It’s important to have an outsourced IT company that can communicate more than one way. Perhaps your issue is that email is down – if they only take email tickets, you're out of luck, etc. At Accent, we can be reached by online ticketing service, email, desktop app, or phone.
Consider delegating some or all of your IT service needs to an outsourced provider for the above benefits, and so many more. If you have a small IT department that's overwhelmed, IT service providers make a great addition to their staff.
Tech Alert
Things change rapidly in the world of tech. We'll keep your business up-to-date on the latest information technology news so you can stay in the know
Related: Outsourced IT Support: A Small Business’s Guide to IT Solutions
