How To Use Co-Managed IT As A Strategy To Stay Competitive
IT management has, for a long time, been associated with complete managed services. However, organizations are now embracing the idea of co-management.
What Is Co-Managed IT?
As the name suggests, Co-management is when your IT management is shared between your existing in-house IT staff and an external service provider. It’s basically outsourcing backup for your IT department. You can see the outsource team as just an extension of your existing IT unit.
This arrangement is the best for organizations of all scopes that want to limit the number of their full-time IT experts.
Who Needs Co-Managed IT?
If you are in either of the following situations, you should consider co-management:
- Your IT staff strain to keep up with surging demands during peak seasons. You can temporarily outsource co-management to help with handling the traffic overload.
- You want to implement a relatively sophisticated technology that your IT guy or staff is not experienced in.
- You are scaling or migrating to new servers, and you need extra hands through the process.
- Your IT department is convenient enough, but only gets overwhelmed during specific periods. You don’t want to hire salaried experts who won’t be of any use when things slow down.
However efficient your in-house IT department is, it is inevitable that you will need help at some point, especially if you’re looking to expand your business. This doesn’t in any way mean that your current IT experts are incompetent. It’s just that besides being vast, IT changes so fast that your few technicians cannot keep up. It happens to the best of IT professionals. In such circumstances, disbanding the entire team may not be the wisest and most practical decision.
The solution lies in co-managed IT services, which come with many benefits.
What Are The Benefits Of Co-Managed IT Services?
An in-house IT Guy or unit can only deliver limited expertise, time, and availability. You could have the best IT experts or departments, but they will still be limited once in a while.
That is where Co-managed IT services come in.
You Rely On Experienced Technicians With The Right Expertise
Co-managed IT services enable you and your IT department to leverage the knowledge and experience of a deep bench of IT specialists at your convenience. What’s more? You do not have to pay costly salaries and allowances to additional full-time technicians. It is a very cost-effective solution if you want to enhance your existing IT resources.
Co-Management Allows You To Outsource IT Support Services On An As-Needed Basis
Instead of hiring more staff, you have experts ready to chip in whenever technology issues past your IT department’s expertise crop up. You are never so sure of the availability or reliability of a random IT guy coming to check your networks. What co-management offers is a consistent team of experts with years of experience, and always available on-demand.
You Get Expert Help While Saving On Cost
Hiring in-house IT staff is just as costly as acquiring and maintaining necessary IT equipment. For each additional specialist, you budget an extra $51,838/year exclusive of other benefits. It’s even worse if you only need their services for just some periods, such as when traffic soars. Co-management offers experts with the same depth of knowledge but at the service provider’s expense. The IT company recruits, pay salaries, allowances, and facilitates capacity building for the technicians. All you have to do is to settle your service bill.
You Access Better Technologies
It’s general knowledge that IT support companies invest heavily in the latest technologies. Their first selling point is the ability to stay at the forefront of IT trends. By contracting them to co-manage your networks, you automatically relish the windfalls that come with their ultramodern technologies.
Your In-House Staff Can Focus On What Is Essential
You did not open the business to run your IT department. You need to grow and meet your aspirations. The more your staff concentrate on tedious daily functions, the more they lose the grip on advancing your goals. You can outsource co-managed IT services to handle these labor-intensive and time-consuming tasks. In doing so, you free your staff to channel all their efforts into business-centered functions.
You Can Easily Scale Up Or Down
With a changing business environment, your business has to evolve and scale its efforts. Instead of employing more permanent staff, you can outsource co-management monthly. Whenever you feel that you no longer need assistance, you have the discretion to scale back. You are not trapped in a three or four years contract.
You Can Make Predictable Budgets
With an in-house team, quite a significant portion of IT expenditures are directly related to inadvertent incidences. You are always anticipating when next you will be requested to release extra bucks for a mishap. For starters, co-management teams are more efficient. This means that the chances of such costly incidences are lowered. Besides, you have a team to share the damage costs with. These factors enable you to predict your budgets with confidence.
You Are Assured Of Better Security
Just like in technology and skill-sets, IT service providers are also known to go an extra length on cybersecurity issues. You can also leverage a competent team to train your staff on cybersecurity literacy and awareness. You can also explore options such as site visits for vulnerability assessments and penetration tests to enhance your network’s security.
Why Co-Managed IT From OnPar Technologies?
Whether you are looking for a short-term or permanent backup for your IT team, you always have to ensure that you get the best locally available support. And this is what OnPar Technologies offers, a dedicated team of professionals who are experienced in co-management programs.
Our experts will:
- Support your in-house team with the skills they need.
- Help your staff implement the latest technologies.
- Train your staff on cybersecurity awareness issues.
- Work hand-in-hand with your existing team and improve their levels of subject matter expertise.
Click here to get started or call us at 919-926-9619 to schedule a consultation.
