Onsite IT support, run by your own staff, can be an expensive way to provide technical IT support in SMEs. The majority of tickets generated will be 1st line, way below the paygrade of many internal IT teams, but essential for minimising downtime and the smooth running of all organisations.
2nd and 3rd line support tickets may offer more interesting work to your inhouse IT team, with the chance of inputting into strategic IT decisions, but if your more highly skilled and specialist staff are also covering 1st line support they’ll be overstretched.
Remote IT support is a good solution to get balance right. You can outsource 1st, 2nd and 3rd line support, in any combination, saving on those expensive salaries and freeing up staff to focus on their core competences.
But what about outsourcing onsite IT support? Is it an option for your organisation and are there more benefits to be had, compared to using an internal team or remote provider?
Here’s where outsourcing onsite IT support can help
- Addresses the lack of internal technical skills
Onsite support is great for project-based IT work as it increases your internal skills without you needing to make permanent hires. Onsite support is also highly beneficial for high risk mission critical projects.
- Provides hands on support for hardware issues
Not all IT problems can be fixed remotely, especially hardware issues. Onsite support improves diagnostics of problems too and the speed of resolutions.
- Increases availability of support
Naturally, having onsite support means someone is available during their working hours to resolve your IT issues. While resolution times will be dependent on ticket volumes and capacity, your organisation will always be their top priority.
- Proactive approach to IT support
Unlike remote IT support where service desk analysts are generally focused on the specific issue a user has, onsite support analysts can take a more proactive approach. For example, by identifying issues that haven’t been reported but are impacting productivity, security or other factors.
- Direct interaction with end users
The benefit of having IT support onsite also extends to employee relationships, communication and engagement. Onsite support analysts are visible, so employees are more likely to request support when they need it instead of trying workarounds or being unproductive. Analysts are also embedded in the organisation, so they have a much better understanding of business drivers, priorities and strategy.
- Increased security and compliance
Accredited service desk providers like Cloud Business can provide remote IT support for regulated organisations and have robust security and data protection measures in place. However, you may want the reassurance of having onsite support for compliance reasons or for highly secure or confidential projects.
If you would like to discuss any of the topics covered in this blog post, or explore outsourcing onsite IT support with us, please get in touch.
