6 Things Your IT Team Can Accomplish When Not Distracted By Helpdesk Support

Hep Desk distractions can cost more than money.

Helpdesk may not be the most cost-effective or strategically sound way to direct your internal IT resources. Increasingly, organizations are realizing the value of partnering with an IT managed services provider (MSP) to fully outsource their helpdesk function.

Studies reveal that in 2017, 11.9 percent of IT budgets are, on average, dedicated to outsourced services. Helpdesk is among the approaches to outsourcing that are driving the most significant cost savings. What could your internal IT experts get done if they weren’t responding to requests for password resets or technical troubleshooting?

1. Proactively Develop a Tech Roadmap

Instead of taking the role of order-taker for an extensive list of endless requests, your IT team can become strategists and develop a long-term plan. When focusing their energy elsewhere, IT cannot fully see the larger picture. Without this foresight, it is difficult for plans to be made to increase productivity in the future.

When you outsource helpdesk duties, this frees time for your IT team to be fully aware of current issues and put in place a plan to have those issues resolved in the future. Having a fully developed plan, the time set aside to set that plan into action and the staff available to do so when needed is well worth the expertise of your team. With your experts dedicated to developing a strategic roadmap, your organization can reduce the risks of being left behind by your competition.

2. Find Opportunities to Cut Costs

If you are like any business owner in today’s workforce, you are always looking for ways to cut cost without cutting away valuable resources. The average salary for an experienced IT specialist is now over $85,000 per year and higher in major metro areas. With an MSP on your side, your organization can begin budgeting a monthly, predictable cost for your helpdesk. You may not need a full-time IT person, or your IT person resourcing may be better spent if you have a less expensive helpdesk.

When your own IT experts aren’t focused on mundane helpdesk requests, they can begin discovering opportunities to save costs on your IT hardware, apps and services. This may include the discovery of redundant software, extra hardware or opportunities to shift services to the cloud from on-premises.

3. Learn New Skills

If you only do what you know, you will never learn anything new. Assigning your IT team to take up hours of their time answering requests on helpdesk inhibits their ability to practice and learn new skills. The skillset of an IT employee is already so valuable that allowing them the time to learn new skills could make them even more of an asset to your business.

Technology is ever-changing, and it would be a shame for those specialized employees to fall behind in industry trends and standards because they are busy doing tasking that could easily be outsourced at a more affordable rate.

4. Improve Turn-Around Times

With outsourced helpdesk assistance, both responses to helpdesk requests and all other IT faculties can be improved. Most helpdesk companies will be available 24/7, so those customers that had to wait before no longer will. More importantly, when major system changes need to be made, your IT team can get to work right away without wasted resources and time answering endless and repeated requests through the helpdesk.

Your organization can significantly improve the speed of IT by making the decision to outsource. This can include faster implementation of cloud-based apps, speedier initiatives and faster technological change at every level of the organization.

5. Perform Proactive Maintenance of Systems

With their newfound freedom from helpdesk duties, your employees will have more time to deeply look into your inner workings to find bugs in the system they may have missed before. Using scheduled and real-time monitoring and management of your networks, your IT team will be able to prevent crashes, minimize downtime, ensure optimal performance and collectively streamline the continuity of your technical interactions.

When something does crash or shut down, your on-site will be free to correct these problems in a fast and accurate manner. Without the distraction of the helpdesk, they are more focused on the important tasks at hand.

6. Find Solutions

Is your helpdesk getting six calls per day asking for help navigating a complex accounting workflow? When IT is tied up with the helpdesk, it can be impossible to see patterns that point to a need for technical solutions, like simpler software. IT can perform data analysis on helpdesk requests to discover areas for much-needed improvements.

The new skillsets learned while free from helpdesk requirements could also have made your employees even more qualified to deal with these sort of issues. Solutions will be set into place long before the issues arise, leaving your business ahead of the game and one step closer to attaining more revenue and higher production value thanks to your specialized and organized IT team.

Takeaway: Outsourcing Non-Core IT Services to an MSP Is an Opportunity

Clogging your IT teams already busy schedule with an overwhelming amount of daily assistance requests can make it impossible for them to see the larger picture. If they can’t look ahead, are they able to really see the forest through the trees? When your IT team is able to focus on trends in helpdesk requests, they can identify patterns and opportunities for improvement. The larger picture is the important one, and outsourcing helpdesk gives your IT employees full access to that vantage viewpoint.

Ready to hand over your helpdesk? Contact us for estimates or to talk more about what outsourced helpdesk support might look like for your business.