The need for vital skills and expertise

One of the key HR concepts in business is to avoid person dependence. Many businesses have experienced difficulties resulting from the inability to access vital skills and expertise, from specific individuals, relied on to deliver services to clients and customers.

In practice, especially for smaller and mid-sized companies, person dependence is unavoidable. Whether to a greater or lesser degree, there might not be people with duplicated specialised skills on staff simply because you don’t have enough work and you can’t justify the extra salary.

For many smaller-scale businesses, the IT function is one operational sphere where person dependence is an unavoidable fact of business life!

Person dependence, technology and your business

There are some key aspects to how person dependence in the IT function translates into the risk of your business technology not working correctly when you need it:

1. Specialised knowledge

   Quite simply even the most capable IT Managers cannot be expected to know everything about IT. Specialised knowledge and skills are often a prerequisite. There are many things that can’t “just be worked out”.

2. Absences

   Even the IT Manager’s need time off for things like training, holidays, sickness, and family circumstances.

3. Under-resourced

   "The Solo IT Manager’s ‘Extremely Long List of Things to Do’ is probably longer than the ‘MD’s Important Business Priorities’ List…!"

The benefits of HTL support

1. Depth and breadth of knowledge

   • The combined knowledge of our people is extensive and this means we can provide specialists for many technologies that are frequently deployed in small and medium-sized businesses.
   • Partner relations with the key manufacturers such as Microsoft allow access to priority support when required.
   • Our experience of supporting other companies in your sector means we apply our knowledge gained from helping one client to benefit another. Our cumulative experience can help the IT manager.

2. Expert 2nd opinion

   • If your IT Manager needs to bounce something technical off someone, then we provide a consultative or 2nd opinion on any technology issue in your business.

3. Cover during absences

   • Whenever your IT Manager is absent from the office our team can step into providing standby cover.

4. Extra resource on tap

   • Whether for projects such as clearing a support backlog or for deploying new technology, whenever you need extra technical resource we provide extra hands to assist.

5. Strategy, not firefighting

   • Your IT Manager is able to assume a more strategic role, able to look at the short to a mid-term road map for the business to make sure technology continues to evolve in the most appropriate way to meet its needs. Less firefighting more pro-activity; reduces stress all around.
   • The IT manager knows your business better than our team. We can pick up the detailed nitty-gritty work and the IT Manager can concentrate on the business strategy and key projects.

End person dependence in the IT function with HTL

HTL is trusted by dozens of small and medium-sized businesses just like yours to provide the support required to eliminate the risk of person dependence in the IT function. To see how we can help you too, simply get in touch today.

Click here for more about our IT support services.