Launching a company is no small feat, and many startups and small businesses opt to outsource some or even all of their IT support to make their financial resources stretch a little further. It’s a good investment, but could it be better?
Many IT service providers offer a variety of essential IT professional services that are designed to help your business thrive no matter how big or small it is. In many cases, professional services can be bundled with your company’s IT package, and some of them may even come included with services you are already using or considering.
IT professional services are an incredible resource, especially to startups and small business, and if you aren’t taking advantage of them, you aren’t getting the most bang for your buck.
IT with Professional Services
To boost your business and get the most out of your IT contract, ask your IT provider about these professional services:
- Project management
- Staff augmentation
- Operating system or platform migration
- Email management and archiving
- Email backups and security
- CRM software integration
- Anything else that’s on the table!
A driven and enthusiastic staff is a huge asset to a startup or small business, and your IT provider can help you build your team with professional services like project management and staff augmentation.
Project Management
Tech projects can often be daunting. But why is that? Tech projects tend to have a lot of moving parts, and for many startups and small businesses, it may be difficult to find the resources to designate a point person to watch over the whole process. Luckily, many IT providers offer a solution in the form of IT project management as a professional service.
A dedicated project manager can do wonders for keeping a project on track and organized. In general, an IT project manager can:
- Serve as the point person for any questions or concerns that come up regarding a project
- Prevent scope creep by organizing and working towards appropriate, measurable goals
- Ensure that all IT project resources are used as effectively as possible
- Manage relevant vendor relations and contracts
- Stay on top of administrative tasks
- Keep teams motivated and on task
- Ensure deliverables are delivered on time
- Generate documentation for the project
- Document and distribute important project-related decisions
Staff Augmentation
It’s never easy to make hiring decisions. It’s even tougher to make hiring decisions when you are searching for talent outside of your area of expertise. So how does a businessperson set about putting together an allstar IT team?
If you are contracting IT services out to an IT provider, the answer may be as simple as contacting your consultant. Many IT providers are happy to assist in hiring decisions, and they have the industry knowledge and experience to optimize the hiring process.
Staff augmentation services can be helpful if you’re looking for:
- In-house IT team members
- Software developers
- Web developers
- App developers
- Business analysts
- Engineers
- Cyber security specialists
- Technical content writers
- Quality assurance specialists
Plus, by letting your IT company handle resume reviews and those tedious technical interviews, you have more time to get back to doing what you do best: running your company!
Professional services can help your business navigate technical transitions such as data migration.
Operating System or Platform Migration
Moving to a new apartment or house is a stressful experience. Between getting a new place, packing, and actually moving all of your stuff, it can be a lot to handle. Moving things from place to place in an IT setting is a similarly challenging experience. To get operating system, platform, or file migration right, you have to:
- Develop a comprehensive migration strategy
- Figure out all of the things that could go wrong during the migration (and how to fix them)
- Assess how much downtime will be associated with your migration
- Minimize the risk of data loss
- Actually transfer the data from one operating system/ platform/ etc. to another
- Put a rollback plan in place
Is that list enough to make you swear off IT migration projects forever? It doesn’t have to be.
IT providers will often assist in migration as a part of other services you include in your contract.
For example, many businesses are making the switch from traditional computing to cloud computing. An IT provider will not only help organize and complete the data migration itself. They will also train staff on how to use your new products and services effectively.
Email headaches? Eliminate them when you when you take advantage of IT professional services.
Email Management
For most businesses– big or small, old or new– email and email marketing comprise the cornerstone of professional communications. But when was the last time you really thought about how effective your company’s use of email as a tool truly is?
Because it’s so commonly used, it may seem like it’s too simple to necessitate any sort of professional service, but managing email can be surprisingly complex.
As a professional service, many IT providers will assist your company by:
- Helping you take advantage of the tools offered by your email provider to keep your inbox organized
- Establish a customer service email and train employees how to use it
- Archiving emails to provide your company with a searchable form of communication documentation
- Creating backups (and redundant backups) of your emails so that the essential information communicated by email is never lost
Keeping your email organized and secure is an amazing opportunity to boost productivity that no startup or small business should ignore.
Email Backup and Security
Speaking of email, what would you do if you went into the office tomorrow– or opened your laptop, or pulled up the mail app on your phone– only to find your email a ghost town? What if everything from your inbox to your sent messages to your drafts disappeared? Chances are, losing your email would be a huge disruption to your work, and with professional services like email backup and security offered by most IT providers, it’s a completely disruption, too.
Your IT provider likely offers a wide variety of email services, including email security and email backup. These two services work together to ensure you never have to worry about email data corruption slowing your company down.
With a wide variety of professional services to choose from, you are sure to find more that will boost your business if you take a look.
Other Professional Services
The professional IT services listed above are a great way to get more out of your IT provider, but they are far from the only IT professional services out there. Your business is unique, and it has unique needs and goals. Ask your IT provider about what other professional services they offer. Maybe that IT-related hassle you’ve been struggling with has a simple solution. Maybe there’s another professional service out there that could double your company’s productivity. Who knows? So do a little research, reach out, and see what happens!
Contact an IT provider to find out more about how professional services can boost your business.
When a startup company or small business makes an investment, it makes sense for them to find ways to get the most out of their investment as possible. Start a conversation about these professional services the next time you contact your IT provider, then just sit back, relax, and watch your productivity soar.
In Conclusion
Any business owner will tell you how important it is to use resources effectively, but for startups and small businesses that don’t have the expansive resources of larger companies, it’s particularly important. Learn about essential IT professional services that will help you get the most out of your IT contract and ultimately get the most bang for your buck!
