There are multiple aspects a business owner should take into consideration when the board decides to hire an IT support company instead of an IT guy because the size of the business requires this step. This can be very challenging because several aspects matter and caution is imperative. Try to allocate as much time as possible to make a more informed decision.
Let me tell you some aspects you need to take care of. Firstly, if you have a business that interacts with clients from different states, you should pick an IT company that is active in those states. So if you need IT support Washington D.C. or Boston or New York, you should choose the company offering IT support in all your locations, you will definitely save money and time this way.
Also, if you face any difficulties, you would probably like the company to provide IT support within the shortest time and you can ask for guarantees to make sure the given service is working again as soon as possible. Guarantees would vary with the level of support you intend to choose and pay for. Of course, some IT troubleshooting procedures take more time than others, not all applications and hardware equipment have same principles of functioning and some of them are more complicated than others, troubleshooting takes time, installing new software takes time and so on. What I mean is that IT is not math, it gets more complicated in terms of help desk support because the clients’ needs increased, there are more apps installed than used to be, more features to simplify your “business’s life” so it takes time.
Hiring an IT support company will be productive because you will get more than just a few professional hands solving IT related issues for your business. For me it’s very important to have more engineers checking our servers, Microsoft apps such as Office365 migrations, skype for business etc. because usually when the volume of work increases, the number of complications gets bigger too.
When IT problems arise, you will see, in case you didn’t experienced already, that it is very frustrating if you can’t reach someone who knows what is happening and can solve the situation fast.
Some companies offer features like: submission of tickets directly to the support team, exclusive phone lines available 24/7, remote support services etc.Ticketing system is commonly used by companies, but make sure they track your ticket correctly and check how they allocate time for each of the opened tickets. So you need to decide if you want full time support or just for working hours, limited schedule and so on. Keep in mind that if you choose a company and not just a guy, you will be able to escalate your problem to the proper level in the hierarchy where a more experimented engineer will solve your issue when others couldn’t.
Here are just some of the suggestions I have for anyone looking for an IT support company to hire for a better management of their businesses. It’s crucial for the existence of any business, the way your partners work on solving your issues.