If your organisation wants the benefits of IT outsourcing but is concerned about risks, read on. In this post we explore the key IT outsourcing risks and how to mitigate them.

Let’s first look at the key risks outsourcing IT can present:

Operational risks – where if something goes wrong with IT outsourcing a transaction or operational process is impacted. For example an order isn’t dispatched or a customer can’t complete a transaction.

Data security risks – giving a 3^rd party access to your organisation’s IT infrastructure has inherent risks. Any additional users increases the risk of a data breach, particularly when accessing systems remotely.

Compliance risks – data security risks go hand-in-hand with compliance risks. All organisations need to comply with data protection regulations like GDPR but some organisation have additional compliance requirements.

Business continuity risks – what happens if the IT service provider is affected by an incident such as a power outage, natural disaster, fire or flood? Their business continuity and disaster recovery plans will have a knock on effect on your organisation.

Reputational damage – if the service your organisation receives from an IT service provider falls short it can damage your organisation’s reputation, particularly if they have a customer-facing role such as providing technical support to your customers.

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How to mitigate these IT outsourcing risks

Planning is the key to militating against any security risk. When outsourcing to a new IT service provider, start the process early to ensure you don’t overlook any detail that could exposure your organisation to unnecessary risk.

The following steps can help:

Conduct a risk assessment. Assess the IT service required against each risk and the business impact if something goes wrong. From this assessment you’ll be able to identify the most critical factors and carry out appropriate due diligence.

Understand the processes the IT outsource provider uses. Due diligence should include a thorough understanding of all the processes employed and how these impact on your organisation. A site visit is highly recommended, although not always feasible if you’re exploring outsourcing to an offshore IT service provider.

Explore how resilient the IT provider’s business is. Get a clear idea of how the provider’s business continuity and disaster recovery processes protect their customers and what processes are in place to minimise disruption to other businesses. Also explore the company’s financial resilience and business plans, if they go under or sell to another company how does that affect your organisation?

Test different risk scenarios with the provider. Just as you would test your business continuity plans internally with key members of staff, test different risk scenarios with the IT service provider. This will help you identify any factors that leave your business vulnerable.

Get guarantees and ask providers to sign up to your standards. Most IT service providers will have quality standards certifications like ISO 27001 for information security. They may also have developed their own standards and processes, aligning them with their customers’ requirements. If not, ask them to sign up to your standards, such as the way they vet staff and handle staff leaving their employment. You can also ask for guarantees that they have the right physical and virtual security protection and processes in place.

Don’t let the security risks associated with IT outsourcing put you off this model! With the right preparation and the right provider you can get all the benefits while mitigating the risks.

For more advice on IT outsourcing please get in touch for an informal chat about your requirements.

How much is your IT service desk costing your business? Most service desk providers will give you a ballpark figure of the average cost per ticket, that’s what they charge you for handling an IT support ticket. But that’s not the only cost your organisation incurs when an employee is affected by an IT incident. There’s also lost working time and that could be significantly more expensive than the ticket cost.

Download our checklist to discover whether your organisation is getting a 4 Star service from your IT support provider. Click here.

In fact Happy Signals, an employee experience measurement tool, believes that the average direct ticket cost (what you pay to your service provider) is €15 per ticket, but the average employee lost productivity cost related to that ticket is €150 (approx. 3 hours on average).

How to reduce lost productivity costs

If you’re outsourcing your service desk rather than running it in house, SLAs will give you some reassurance that tickets will be resolved in a timely way. However, response times will depend on the nature of the IT incident and the priority that’s been agreed for the type of incident and the users affected. For example, if an IT incident is preventing a large number of staff from getting on with their work the ticket might be given a priority 1 with a target fix time of 1 hour.

That’s why it’s really important to understand the impact different IT incidents can have on your company and key members of staff, and agree priority levels with your service provider.

However, even those less serious incidents that are given a lower priority level are disruptive, and no employee wants to hear that they’re less of a priority than someone else. This results in a negative employee experience even when your service provider is fulfilling agreed SLAs.

So how can we improve the employee experience, reduce the cost of downtime and give those priority tickets the attention they need?

Here are our recommendations:

How to improve employee experience and service desk performance

#1: Assess the priority levels given to different tickets

If your employees are losing valuable hours waiting for low priority tickets to be resolved, may be the priority levels are wrong? Your service desk provider will suggest how to rank different IT incidents based on their experience, but priority levels for tickets will be unique to your organisation. Review the tickets raised in the last 3 – 6 months to identify any trends and speak to your service provider about how to reduce downtime.

#2: Introduce next generation service desk technology

Many employees have good IT skills and could resolve commonly occurring IT issues for themselves with the right tools. Next gen technology such as web chat and other self-serve tools can help them get back to work quickly without needing a service desk analyst or technician’s help. Speak to your IT support provider about how to implement a next generation service desk.

#3: Change the culture of your service desk

If your service desk team are focused on logging tickets, not listening to what users are telling them, you could have a cultural mismatch. Make sure your service desk analysts are listening first and then pointing users to the most appropriate resolution. This might be to share content from your knowledge bank so they can resolve the issues themselves. Or, having listened to the user and got a better understanding of the impact of the issue on that individual or department, the service desk analyst may assign a higher priority to the ticket than they would had they only listened to what the problem is.

#4: Take proactive steps to prevent commonly occurring issues

A proactive service desk will monitor tickets and identify issues that can be prevented before they occur, or at least minimised. Review commonly occurring issues to see what the root cause of these are and how they can be resolved permanently, over time this could save your business many hours in lost productivity.

#5: Give your in-house service desk team the support they need 

If you currently handle all IT support tickets internally, you may find that outsourcing 1^st line tickets will improve the employee experience and have a positive impact on your IT team. This will allow internal teams to focus on 2^nd and 3^rd line tickets that are more complex and time consuming, while 1^st tickets like password resets, clearing printer queues and account unlocks are handled by the outsource partner.

IT incidents will always take time to resolve and that can have a negative impact on productivity. However, the tips above can help you minimise downtime and the cost of each incident, over and above the direct cost of raising a ticket.

Outsourcing your organisation’s IT function (in full or in part) has many benefits. But these benefits often go hand in hand with risks.

Here we share 5 of the most common IT outsourcing risks and how to handle them:

5 IT outsourcing risks to avoid or resolve

#1: Loss of control

IT outsourcing by definition means that you’ll be handing over some of the managerial control of your IT function to an IT services provider. In most cases this is a benefit, it frees your team up to focus on other activities. However, ‘out of sight, out of mind’ is not the desired outcome; instead your provider and their team should really be an extension of your internal team, where you have transparency and visibility over everything that relates to your organisation.

How to avoid losing control? – Make sure all parties understand the parameters of the project; ensure that the services provided are aligned with business and operational goals, and that there is a clear protocol for changing deliverables; have a clear reporting systems and identify exactly what information you need from the provider; promote collaboration between each team.

#2:  Loss of skills and knowledge

If you’re considering outsourcing your IT service desk or other operational functions to a IT outsourcing provider, you may be concerned that you’ll lose internal skills and knowledge. This could potentially make it difficult to bring a function back in-house or move to a different IT services provider.

Access to skills is actually a motivating factor for outsourcing IT, when your organisation has a skills gap, but it’s an understandable concern when weighing up whether to recruit or outsource.

How to keep skills and knowledge in-house? Identify the most important skills required in-house and ensure you’re investing in training and CPD to keep your IT team up-to-date; investigate whether a hybrid outsourcing model may be appropriate, for example outsourcing 1^st line tickets but retaining 2^nd and 3^rd in-house; consider also whether it would be beneficial for the service provider to work directly with your internal team, helping to upskill individuals and retain skills; ensure the IT service provider continually updates documentation and your organisation’s IT knowledge bank.

How much does outsourcing your Service Desk cost? Get a high level quote here >

#3: Geolocation

In theory IT outsourcing providers could be located anywhere in the world. Many of them are. The offshore outsourcing model is used by many organisations. However, for some organisations there is a risk when the provider is located on the other side of the globe. Time zones, language barriers and the ability to make on-site visits are obvious hurdles that might need to be overcome. Other considerations are the economic and political climate in the region the provider is located, as well as industry and local.

Is geolocation an issue? Be clear about what services you require and how location may affect service levels, and what compromises your organisation is prepared to make. Offshore providers can often be cheaper than onshore companies, but may not deliver the service your organisation requires. Factor in regulatory compliance, including the impact on your organisation’s clients and their governance. Think about the future and whether the provider is able to scale with your business and support development and growth.

#4: Security and compliance

Giving a 3^rd party provider, and their employees or contractors, access to your IT systems and infrastructure is not without security risks. However, as well as functions such as IT support, many organisations are outsourcing cyber security and data protection to external providers: who can often do it much better than they can.

Is security a risk? The first step is to address any compliance issues and how working with a 3^rd party provider impacts regulations. Then understand exactly what data and systems a provider will have access to, for example if an analyst offers desktop support they’ll potentially have access to corporate data stored on local drives and maybe network shares. Find out what data the provider needs, what they do with that data, how it is used and stored and how they protect it. Do background checks and get confidentiality agreements in place. Check for ISO 27001.

#5: Not aligned with business operations and objectives

Finally, an IT outsourcing risk can be a lack of alignment between the organisation’s day-to-day operations and strategic direction. Some providers are guilty of selling in their services without fully understanding the business and this can result in an organisation not getting value and positive ROI.

How to avoid this risk? Alarm bells should sound if the provider attempts to sell a one-size-fits-all service without first taking the time to understand your requirements, operations and business objectives. Put your IT requirement out to tender with a Request for Proposal to help shortlist providers and identify those that want to develop a strategic partnership with your organisation.

If you would like to discuss IT outsourcing in more detail please get in touch for an informal chat with our team.

IT outsourcing can help SMEs reduce IT costs while enjoying the freedom to access new technologies.

It is likely that you currently have core IT operations that could really benefit from being managed by a third party service provider – either onsite or offsite, depending on what is the best arrangement for you.

Why outsource your IT?

There are many reasons why a business might choose to outsource part or all of its IT operations. These can include cost savings, particularly from owning and managing an IT network and employing an IT team to carry out the work.

There are other reasons besides cost – IT may not be the core activity of your business, so outsourcing can relieve the pressure and allow you to focus on your core competencies. Outsourcing can provide you with access to the latest industry technologies and processors creating better operational efficiencies. It can also improve your speed to market for new products and services.

Service quality can also be improved through outsourcing specific operations such as customer service and payroll etc. for example.

Which IT operations are usually outsourced?

All IT activities can now be run as outsourced services, including the development and implementation of applications and IT systems themselves.

Many non-core IT activities, which businesses have traditionally provided internally, are now available as outsourced services. These include IT service desk and support, IT maintenance, security, backup and recovery and even the running of core business applications such as Microsoft 365.

Find out how much outsourcing your IT service desk would cost. Get a high level quote here

How do I outsource my IT?

Once you have decided which department or operations you would like to outsource and made the business case for it, the next step is to find an outsourcing partner who matches your requirement.

From a financial point of view, it is advisable to understand your existing IT estate and its cost base in enough detail to enable us to evaluate the most cost effective solution for you.

Should I look for an offshore provider or stay UK based?

Overseas service providers may be able to offer good rates but there are many considerations involved in choosing to outsource your services abroad.

For example, will the overseas provider be subject to the same legislation as any UK based provider? For example, in relation to legal or data protection?

Who will audit the off-shore services, and correct any problems? Also, will the overseas provider have a sufficient degree of familiarity with the language and expectations of your customers? These points must be considered very carefully.

Ensuring that you get the most out of your outsourcing relationship means you will need to have regular meetings with your service provider, and measure their performance. This level of monitoring will be highly challenging with an overseas provider.

Is Software as a Service (SaaS) the same as IT outsourcing?

Software as a Service (SaaS) or web-based software is not necessarily the same as IT outsourcing, however it does have similar principals.

A service provider will manage and maintain a business application for you, offering you access to it over a network and backing up any information that is generated from your usage.

You will be billed accordingly for the services you use, and there will be an agreement between you and the service provider that governs your usage and their responsibilities to you. The sorts of IT operations that can be provided as on-demand SaaS services include email, accounting, human resources etc.

If you have any further questions about IT outsourcing for SMEs, please get in touch. Our team are happy to have an informal chat about your requirements and explore different options.

Many companies face the challenge of deciding if the continuation of an in-house IT team is the best way forward, versus the benefits of outsourcing to an external expert.

This blog post looks at some of the benefits of IT outsourcing:

Benefits of outsourcing your IT

Focus

When you outsource, you can focus your time, attention and resources on your company’s core competencies. The remainder of your time can be spent achieving new goals.

Outsourcing frees up time for the people in your business – to focus on running and growing your company.

Many companies find that, as they grow, a key member of staff ends up becoming the ‘IT scapegoat’. Known to be good with computers, the IT scapegoat gets bombarded with requests for help whenever anything goes wrong, distracting them from their actual job. If your sales manager spends more time helping staff with computer problems than selling, then you know it’s time to make some changes.

Flexibility

Outsourcing is also a very flexible option. The biggest benefit of short term outsourcing is that you are able to bring in an expert for a defined period of time to perform a task without long term commitment.

Even if the hourly or project rate is higher than hiring an employee, you may save a significant sum by not committing to an annual salary and benefits etc.

This flexibility is also seasonal which means you can scale up or down quickly and accordingly – Ideal for temporary or short term operations – such as seasonal fulfilment, tax preparation or upgrading your infrastructure.

A service desk is often outsourced because those providers are better equipped to handle high volumes of calls on demand. It provides longer- term service desk needs as you gain operational efficiencies and skills that you would have a difficult time replicating in- house.

Outsourcing: when is the right time for you?

The correct time to outsource is different for each company. Some businesses have in-house staff to handle daily activities, but may need outside help to undertake new projects that don’t warrant another full-time employee.

When you are unable to manage the day-to-day business of your company and you have the desire to grow to the next stage, it may be time to consider outsourcing.

For most, the right time for outsourcing is when you have no time left to pursue growth.

If your company is without IT support, we can implement our services within a week. If an existing agreement is ending, we can transition the service during the month of the incumbent suppliers contract end (if required). A comfortable timeframe can be agreed to take into account your needs.