Co-Managed IT Services: 3 Reasons Why Your Business Needs It

It’s quite common to see small businesses hire a small in-house team to cater to the whole company’s IT needs. While this is better than having no dedicated IT team to perform these specialized duties, this is rarely a sustainable option.

In this situation, business owners are in an awkward position of having IT needs that exceed a two-person team’s capabilities, yet not having enough flexibility to hire more people just yet. As such, instead of hiring a few heads that you can’t afford or don’t need yet, you can go with hiring a co-managed IT service instead.

Co-managed IT service providers complement your existing personnel by letting you outsource IT services that exceed your in-house personnel’s bandwidth. To drill its importance even further, here are three signs that your company will benefit from hiring an IT solutions company that offers co-managed IT services.

Your in-house IT administrator is overworked

As companies grow in size, so do their IT needs. What used to be an ideal workload for a one-person team can quickly become untenable—particularly with the growing complexity of needs that come with scaling a business.

While the knee-jerk reaction is to hire more, this is rarely the most sustainable option. Sometimes the uptick might be temporary or seasonal, making it unwise to invest in more employees prematurely. Instead of hiring employees that you don’t need—much less afford—for the long term, it’s good business sense to go with an IT-solutions company that offers co-managed IT services.

Your in-house IT staff is relatively inexperienced in a specific area

Your in-house staff might be experts in more mundane IT tasks, such as systems maintenance, network configuration, or property acquisition. However, some services, such as manning a helpdesk or scaling and maintaining a server, will require additional training and human resources that you might not have the resources for at the moment.

Co-managed IT services can fulfil your more extended IT needs, allowing you to make use of the additional bandwidth without having to worry about the total cost of training and specialization of personnel. This setup frees your in-house IT staff to improve their current skill sets, while your co-managed IT service provider takes care of the rest of the workload.

This setup also works if you want to complement your existing staff’s capabilities. For example, your in-house IT staff can handle most daily troubleshooting tasks, while your co-managed IT service provider provides backup for cases beyond your team’s expertise.

You have a short term need for additional IT support

This also applies if you have a short-term need for specialized IT services, but do not want to overwork your IT staff or leave their other tasks unattended. For example, you may want to migrate your company data from your on-site storage to a private server.

Another situation that would require this is if you want to migrate your company’s email system from an IMAP/POP environment to Office 365. Depending on the number of email accounts that need to be migrated, the project could be way beyond a small IT team’s bandwidth.

Instead of spreading your staff too thinly for a few months, it’s better to outsource these tasks to a co-managed IT service provider.

Conclusion

Co-managed IT services help you scale your IT needs depending on your business situation. Instead of hiring new employees that you can’t afford nor need for the long-term or overworking your current staff, it’s best to go with an IT solutions company that provides co-managed IT services.

Are you looking for a provider of co-managed IT services in Alberta, Canada? Bracer Systems Inc. is an IT solutions company that offers services in business continuity, co-managed IT services, Cloud PBX, and more. Contact us today to learn more!