6 Ways Your IT Service Vendor Can Benefit Your Business
An IT service vendor can make life a lot easier for you. Think of them as a centralized way to source and procure some or all of your IT devices and services and save a lot of time and effort, along with simplifying the procurement process. Outside of the obvious, there are many other benefits that a good IT service vendor (like vCom) can provide. Here are six ways this type of outsourcing can benefit your business.
1. Offer Insight for Trends and New Technologies
Offering a strategic plan for organizational technology needs is something that every IT department is expected to do. However, IT departments don’t always have the requisite resources to do emergent technologies and trends due diligence. Finding time when you’re putting out fires can seem like a luxury. A good IT service vendors will not only have the resources to do the research and project planning, but often has deep relationships with technology and service providers that can result in discounts, service enhancements, and shortened project lead times.
2. IT Best Practices and Expertise
Understanding industry best practices are key to making complex decisions regarding technology. As mentioned previously, staying on top of the latest and greatest and understanding best practices across multiple levels of technology can be time-consuming. When working with an IT service vendor the onus is on the vendor is to ensure that they are up to speed on what technologies/services will work best for your need. Of course, trusting that they are up to date on all the latest is mandatory. Keep this in mind when choosing IT vendors for your business. In tandem with best practices, vendors can make sure their IT infrastructure is optimized and tuned to run at the highest possible performance.
IT vendors specialize in this industry and have significant expertise in the area. They can offer suggestions and advice on overcoming challenges or putting you in touch with others who have encountered similar issues.
3. Leasing/CapEx to OpEx
Another lesser-known benefit is that many vendors offer a leasing plan to help companies meet their IT needs while evenly distributing costs over time. In addition, they may also offer buy-back or trade-in plans that allow a way to keep everything up to date. Alternatively, some service vendors (like vCom) offer models that allow businesses to make large purchases on devices or equipment and pay over time directly to the vendor. This move transforms the cost from the capital to an operational expense becoming a more manageable and predictable expense.
4. Outsourcing Migration and Upgrades
While migrating to new systems and major upgrades are necessary to evolve, IT departments don’t always have the resources to implement the migrations and upgrades. Management may also not want to put company resources into the task. When this happens, IT service providers can undertake the task of migrating or upgrading under the supervision of the IT department, allowing business as usual.
5. Total Cost of Ownership and Return On Investment Figures
IT decision-makers need to know (and often show) how their decisions regarding challenges will impact the business ahead of time. It’s not always possible to see the effects until the choices are implemented and up and running. One of the benefits of working with an IT service vendor is that they usually have data based on previous similar implementations and can provide a return on investment and total cost of ownership figures that can be presented to corporate decision-makers to justify IT expenditures. They can also show in hard data the payoff for choosing a particular solution.
6. Industry Studies
IT service vendors will often perform or participate in studies regarding the state of the current IT market. This helps readers zero in on specific sectors that may be of the area of interest–i.e. cloud or SaaS technologies–and be used to gather information on what potential future projects and technology roadmaps.
Taking advantage of these and other benefits provided by an IT vendor can save your business time and money and improve the overall quality of your business.
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