Engaging with an IT partner doesn’t need to be an all-or-nothing exercise. In many cases organisations will partner with an IT provider to work alongside existing in-house IT staff to provide complementary skills and capabilities. When choosing an IT partner to work alongside in-house IT staff it’s important to choose one familiar with this model to ensure a productive, harmonious engagement.
Here are the top 5 ways that the right IT partner will be able to work alongside your existing IT staff.
#1. Work with senior business leaders to develop an overarching IT strategy
In some cases, companies may have internal IT staff who are well capable of taking care of day-to-day IT management support and project delivery. Yet senior business leaders may still need additional support in building an overall IT strategy for your IT staff to execute. Choosing a professional IT strategy consultant will give you the confidence that your technology is aligned with your long-term business strategy, helping manage growth, improve profit and drive positive change.
#2. Provide ongoing IT management support to help your staff maintain focus and accountability
Companies with in-house IT staff may find there is still a gap in the management and execution of IT strategy into the organisation. Choosing an IT partner who can provide ongoing IT management support will ensure a smooth execution of any agreed IT strategy. Your IT partner will also ensure your IT staff stay focused and accountable on executing IT initiatives throughout the business.
#3. Provide help-desk support to allow in-house IT managers to focus on high value activities
It’s common for existing in-house IT support staff to become consumed with day-to-day help-desk support for staff and clients. This in turn doesn’t give them time to work on bigger picture IT strategies, planning and execution. Partnering with a reliable IT firm can help provide help-desk and service desk support for your company, allowing existing in-house resources – whether technical or management – to focus on higher value activities within your organisation.
#4. Deliver IT projects and change initiatives that require specialist skills
A good IT partner can provide project delivery capabilities to help companies deliver IT initiatives requiring specialist technical skills that your in-house IT staff may not have, such as Microsoft Office 365 migrations and process automation development. These IT capabilities can be complex, and something you want to implement correctly the first time.
#5. Provide escalation support for in-house support staff
In-house IT support staff may manage the incidents and problems that occur in your system, but may not have the higher level technical skills or experience to handle the more complex and involved issues. The right IT partner can provide that higher level escalation support, from both a generalist perspective or a more specific product area. For example, in house IT support may handle all day-to-day help-desk requests, and then escalate the more complex or time consuming issues to your IT partner.
As you can see, investing in the right IT partner can provide additional IT support in a more targeted and specific way, becoming an extension to your IT team. In the digital world that we live in today, you can never have too much support when it comes to your business IT needs.
