During times of economic strength, a company’s use of IT often reflects their aspirations of growth and success. Whether it’s upgrading to the latest versions of software or investing in infrastructure, IT is seen as a tool for improving efficiency and gaining competitive advantage.
As the economy slows, the main focus inevitably switches to making savings and taking costs out of the business. With IT budgets accounting for a considerable part of any business’s spend, it is one of the areas often looked to for savings.
While it’s important to streamline and cut costs, it is also important to remember why IT has become a central part of most businesses, and why so many IT projects are approved when times are good. There is a strong argument that during economic difficulties it is more important than ever that IT is at the centre of efficiency drives.
Reliable IT
As more is asked of employees, the value of having a reliable IT network increases. The cost of user downtime is a cost many businesses simply cannot afford. There is also a danger that holding back on new IT projects prevents a business from innovating and gaining advantage over their competitors.
For many years, large corporate companies have outsourced their IT as a way of managing costs and monitoring performance. With new advances in technology, more and more small to medium sized businesses are now able to take advantage of the benefits and savings outsourcing can bring.
Reducing costs
On a like for like basis, the costs of outsourcing the support of a network are considerably lower than managing IT internally. Automation tools can now replace a large percentage of the functions that are carried out by IT staff, such as system monitoring, maintenance of critical equipment / software applications and also automatically ensuring security updates and policies are 100% up to date. By removing the day-to-day administrative tasks from IT staff, their focus can be returned to delivering projects to help move the business forward.
The level of support is also increased as the business gains access to a team of technical engineers, trained to the highest levels – training that’s near impossible to maintain with internal staff due to the costs involved and IT’s ever changing nature.
Savings
As an example of the savings that can be made, Northamptonshire Chamber of Commerce recently outsourced their IT to Northampton based acs office solutions. Over the term of the 3-year agreement, the Chamber estimates savings of more than £60,000 and anticipates an improvement in service levels.
Paul Griffiths, Chief Executive of Northamptonshire Chamber of Commerce, said: “It was imperative that we chose a partner who is able to maintain the smooth running of all systems, whilst being able to adopt a pro-active approach to assist the business in achieving its business objectives. acs demonstrated an understanding and ability to be able to meet this key requirement.”
In the past year alone acs has helped drive costs out of more than 1,000 businesses in the region. If you would like to have a no-obligation discussion about driving IT costs out of your business or switching from your current IT support provider, please call Keith Bird on 01604 704000 or email keithb@acs365.co.uk.
