Start-ups and small businesses are often highly cost-conscious, with a can-do attitude that usually sees the founders becoming involved in a range of non-core activities – including in supporting the IT that helps businesses tick over.
However, as a business grows, owner-managers must realise that it’s impossible to personally service every business requirement, and that experts in their respective fields, such as IT, can deliver so much more.
In this article, we outline how taking steps to outsource IT support can help you grow your business more quickly and more sustainably. Read on to find out why outsourced IT support is an essential step for growing businesses.
As a business grows, its use of IT changes
Growing businesses often make very informal use of technology - think personal email accounts and Dropbox storage. At the same time, an evolving business might have relatively limited technology requirements, depending on the sector in which it operates.
However, when a business grows, the complexity of its technology requirements will grow too. For example, a single restaurant with an IT-savvy owner could conceivably take care of its own technology requirements. Yet a multi-brand, nation-wide restaurant group will require enterprise-grade technology systems to support everything from supply chain management to bookings and payroll.
So, there comes a point in time when business owners need to realise that managing IT internally is simply no longer a realistic option. A growing business demands extensive technology support. Yes, in-house IT might have been fine in the past, but growing businesses have changing requirements – by choosing an IT support company, your business can make sure its requirements are met.
You can focus on what you do best
Unless you’re in the business of technology, chances are that IT is not a core competency. It is easy to argue that companies should focus on what they do best – rather than trying to tackle every business problem in-house.
By outsourcing IT support, London businesses can focus on their competencies in order to develop their products and services and to build their customer base. Every business – and the people that manage it – has limited resources. By outsourcing IT support, a business can focus its resources on growing rather than dealing with the nitty gritty of maintaining technology.
Furthermore, the expertise derived from an outsourced IT provider can feed back into business growth: technology experts can suggest better ways of operating, ranging from marketing technology that brings new customer on board, through to improved delivery of your products and services – and indeed an improved service offering supported by IT.
Outsourcing reduces your costs
Internal staff are unlikely to operate and manage IT requirements with the efficiency of an IT support company that manages IT at scale. As a result, your growing company may well spend far more on servicing its technology requirements than it needs to – money which would be better spent on growing your business.
Instead, it is worth considering an outsourced provider in order to free up internal resources that can be better deployed to help grow your business. Outsourced IT support providers can also provide effective suggestions that can lead to reduced expenditure on equipment kept on-premise, thereby freeing up capital that can be deployed to business growth.
Growing businesses need IT that scales
Businesses can grow rapidly, and with quick growth comes the need to rapidly scale IT. Internal teams can struggle to keep up with growing technology demand, with businesses facing the choice of taking on new hires at speed or risk hampering growth due to restrictive IT capacity.
When outsourcing IT support, London-based companies can take advantage of the scalability and flexibility that only an external provider can bring. Your external provider will be serving countless other customers and will have the capacity to quickly scale up if your company’s technology needs to increase in size.
Expectations of IT shift as a business grows
Informal IT may serve a small operation well, but employees and customers will have far higher expectations of the technology capabilities once a business reaches a certain size. Internal teams may simply not have the knowledge or the experience to deliver the level of service and the capabilities required by a larger business.
In contrast, an IT support company can deliver the quality of service and breadth of service that a growing business demands. In turn, your staff will work more efficiently, while customers will notice the responsiveness and improved level of service that capable information technology provisioning brings to the table.
The right partner will invest in your success
In closing, it’s worth noting that a capable IT company will work alongside your business to find ways in which IT can boost business growth. Technology drives efficiency, customer acquisition, and the bottom line – in fact, in a 2017 survey 81% of respondents suggested that IT is a strategic enabler for business.
Finding the right IT partner can be a game-changer for business growth. It can enable growth rather than impeding growth, and ensure that business growth does not create operational issues that will undermine future growth and profitability.
HTL has helped countless businesses scale their IT to match their growth ambitions – get in touch to see how our outsourced IT solutions can help your business grow.