Using Outsourced IT Support Services Can Help Identify Opportunities for Growth

IT support provides an excellent opportunity for businesses to spot ways to scale, either by improving productivity, embracing the potential for automation, or increasing capacity through the intelligent use of advanced technology.

As an outsourced IT support services specialist, we often work long-term with our business customers, getting to know the strengths and weaknesses of their IT infrastructure. This oversight puts us in a great position to make independent recommendations, cost savings and see where upgrades could speed up their processes or free up bottlenecks.

Here we’ll explain how your IT assets could spark growth within your organisation and why legacy solutions could be holding you back.

Using IT as Part of Your Business Growth Strategy

The reality is that most levels of growth or scalability require a baseline investment – it is difficult to transform the way you operate or introduce new services or products without expenditure. For many businesses, especially SMEs, that means they have limited ways to get ahead or gain a competitive advantage if they do not have the resources to reinvest.

However, IT is one piece of the puzzle that can be highly flexible, and even minor tweaks to the software you use or the way you handle everyday administrative tasks could unlock potential.

Introducing Advanced IT as a Scalability Exercise

Here is a quick case study example to show how this might work in a real-world scenario.

• • A service-based business employs three full-time members of staff who spend 90% of their time dealing with client queries or providing technical explanations for customers.
  • They find it hard to expand because they do not have any free time to spare, nor do they have the capital to invest in significant new developments or projects.
  • Currently, they have the maximum number of clients they can accept because onboarding new customers would stretch the workforce too thin and impact the service standards they provide and base their reputation on.
  • The company is fairly successful but is restricted. The owners would love to onboard 10% more clients, which would take it from slightly profitable to highly profitable, generating the finances necessary to hire more staff or introduce new services.

In this situation, we’d take a comprehensive look at the systems the company is using because it’s incredibly likely they can remove those time pressures on the small team of colleagues and free up that space they need to realise their aspirations.

The area that drains time most is spent on the phone, so switching to a hybrid telecoms system could be a great solution. How about an automatic call handling system, directing customers to pre-existing explainer videos and technical specification sheets – reducing call volumes by a few per cent?

From there, the company could look at digital call services, so the team isn’t tied to a desk and can deliver the same responsiveness without sacrificing their ability to network. They might then consider a password-protected customer portal, using a new software solution where existing clients can immediately find all the information they need in one place – without duplicating time or answering the same question multiple times.

As a few initial ideas, you can see how IT supports growth and isn’t purely an asset that sits in the background allowing a business to function. Used correctly, latest technology can be a powerful tool adapted to your goals, requirements and key challenges.

Building a Forward-Thinking IT Strategy

The best practice within IT management is to create a tailored strategic approach. This adjustable roadmap sets out where the business is now, what it wants to achieve, and what needs to happen to get it there.

Outsourcing IT support is a great first step, ensuring that systems, telecoms, networks and hardware all work perfectly, eliminating downtime, outages, IT security risks and glitchy connections which stall progress and make it harder to evolve.

We are a managed IT service provider who works closely with clients who recognise how IT support can assist them in reaching growth targets and use an audit of their existing IT infrastructure as the launchpad for innovative ideas, creative systems design and discussion to identify resources that could make it far easier to grow.

Examples might include speeding up systems with more supple solutions, upgrading old desktop-based programs with cloud-based solutions, or replacing legacy processes with automation, meaning repetitive tasks are all taken care of by your IT systems.

Cloud migration is a big priority, where businesses need to find ways to make their data storage safer, work faster with remote and hybrid teams, and access reports and information from any location or device – a focus point for companies where a proportion of the workforce works in the field, or from home for part of the week.

Finding the Right Ways to Create a Foundation for Business Growth

Smaller businesses commonly have the potential to grow faster than larger organisations without the agility to respond quickly to trends or pivot their attention when something new comes onto the market that affects their products or services. The barriers to expansion are often related to time and costs, where an experienced IT team can recommend solutions that are scalable – with low entry requirements that are budget-friendly, yet with the ability to expand and keep pace as your business grows.

Collaborating with expert outsourced IT support services specialists is cost-effective and flexible, meaning you can request consultative services when you need to, with the assurance that your current networks are all well managed.

Choosing the most suitable tools to enhance scalability can make a huge difference to your short and long-term prospects, whether they relate to connectivity solutions, cybersecurity protection or finding options that are highly relevant to your trading sector.

For any further insights into using IT outsourcing services to help with business expansion, understanding which elements of your current IT infrastructure might be a hindrance rather than a help, or to have a chat about how our outsourced IT support services might solve a problem for your business, please get in touch with the Jera support team at any time.