Your IT tasks are increasing by the week! You need eyes over every part of your business to ensure you keep your competitive edge. So – it’s time to consider IT help desk outsourcing.
But what do outsourced help desk services do for your company? What do they provide? And what are the pros and cons?
Significant decisions like these can make any entrepreneur nervous, and service desk outsourcing is no different!
However, in this article, we’ll go from basics to specifics to give you a complete guide to IT help desk outsourcing.
What is IT Help Desk Outsourcing?
Top Benefits of Outsourcing IT Help Desk Functions
Differences Between IT Service Desk & IT Help Desk
Why Should Your Business Outsource its IT Help Desk?
Disadvantages and Challenges of Outsourcing IT Help Desk Services
Services an Outsourcing IT Help Desk Provider Offers
Other Types of IT Services You Can Outsource
What is IT Help Desk Outsourcing?
Have you ever gone to work, powered up your PC, and discovered
- your email is down,
- your internet speed has slowed, or
- your printer won’t connect?
You decide it’s time to call your IT department. You get on the phone, and someone walks you through your issues until it’s fixed.
Your help desk staff are invaluable. But they’re stretched, and they have to also keep an eye on your overall business tech and its ROI.
This is where outsourcing comes into its own. A basic service desk will help fix these kinds of tech issues as they arise. It’s reactive; it’s incident management. This kind of service desk outsourcing includes:
- Ticket management
- Incident resolution
- Certain customer service requests
In other words, outsourced help desk services assist your IT department with these routine tasks that are time-consuming for your IT in-house team.
Here are a few basics of what such help desk services provide:
- IT support comes through a help desk that serves as a single point of contact (SPOC).
- Service desk outsourcing typically employs automated systems for tracking and prioritizing service requests through ticketing, routing, and email notifications.
- Typically, service levels associated with a help desk offer incident and service request management at its most basic level.
- Trying to integrate a help desk with other IT service management practices is limiting.
- Service desk outsourcing offers minimal self-service opportunities to its end users.
These support services greatly assist smaller organizations with these more straightforward IT issues. Although more prominent companies also benefit from service desk outsourcing services, there are many benefits you can reap whatever your size.
Top Benefits of Outsourcing IT Help Desk Functions
Help desk outsourcing is becoming the norm. Here are a few reasons your organization can reap benefit from help desk outsourcing.
1 Reduced cost
Help desk outsourcing is a fantastic way to reduce in-house operational costs.
It’s cheaper to outsource help desk support services than hire staff who require a yearly salary, health benefits, bonuses, holiday pay, training, new equipment, and office space.
On the other hand, most help desk outsourcing services charge a minimal monthly fee. The predictability of monthly payments help you budget while reducing overall costs for your organization.
2 More time to focus on business growth
By utilizing outsourced IT help desk services, businesses can concentrate on their core strengths while leaving technical support to professionals. This enables companies to allocate more time and resources toward expanding their operations and innovating new products or services.
3 Improved operations
You improve operations because your external team answers and solves queries while your in-house team’s load reduces, allowing them to address other business-driven issues.
4 Increased availability
Customer service is king for businesses. Service desk outsourcing gives you a team that scales up or down to the demands of employees and customers.
Differences Between IT Service Desk & IT Help Desk
As you might imagine, “service desk” and “help desk” are often used to signify the same thing. However, they’re different.
A help desk primarily functions as a break/fix solution center. In other words, something breaks within your IT infrastructure, and they fix it. It’s common for support services to troubleshoot common issues.
Regarding an IT service desk, however, a service desk is a more evolved form of a help desk.
An IT service desk offers break/fix solutions plus:
- IT Monitoring
- Provision of reports
- Help for users
- Other help desk functions as provided by your desk partner
In short, an IT service desk provides a wider range of services for customers and users.
A few notable differences between an IT service desk and a help desk include the following:
- A help desk uses a calculated, reactionary response. In contrast, a service desk offers a more strategic, proactive approach.
- Help desks provide great short-term solutions, while service desks offer longer-term planning and implementation.
Choosing one over the other depends on the size of your organization, your IT infrastructure, the type of services you desire, and the depth of services you need.
However, it’s important to note that both service desk outsourcing and help desk functions are affordable solutions.
Why Should Your Business Outsource its IT Help Desk?
Although there are many reasons you might choose to outsource your IT help desk services, here are a few important ones to consider:
- It’s cost-effective for all businesses.
- Outsourcing help desk support allows you great scalability in terms of how much support your business needs at any one time.
- You gain access to top-tier experts in the field – always up to date with the latest skills.
- Round-the-clock support – covering you when others have gone home.
- High-quality support from dedicated IT help desk teams who want you to succeed.
- Peace of mind that your business queries are in safe hands.
Let’s review.
1 Cost-effectiveness
Many businesses find outsourcing IT help desk services more affordable than keeping an in-house team. Outsourcing allows you to take advantage of economies of scale and avoid the costs related to hiring and training new employees.
2 Scalability
By outsourcing IT help desk services, you can easily adjust the level of support according to your needs. This flexibility ensures you can quickly adapt to changing circumstances. You don’t have the added concern of laying off employees (which is distressing) or spending time hiring for temporary purposes.
3 Access to expertise
Outsourcing companies offer specialized support from highly skilled and experienced technicians – support that may not be available from your in-house team. This expertise can be particularly valuable for smaller businesses with limited resources if you need specialized IT professionals.
For instance, outsourcing help desk solutions can grant you access to personnel with skills in:
- Coding
- App development
- Web design
- Support
- Troubleshooting
- Customer service
4 Round-the-clock support
IT outsourcing companies benefit businesses operating in multiple time zones or with customers in different regions. This 24/7 support ensures you receive assistance at any time, regardless of the time zone you or your customers are in.
5 High-quality support
As noted above, help desk outsourcing services grant you access to high-quality IT skills. In turn, this gives you access to high-quality support on all levels to continue maintaining your IT and its infrastructure.
Overall, help desk services resolve issues quickly so your business can continue its daily functions.
Furthermore, IT help desk outsourcing services paired with other service levels can provide modern problem-solving solutions such as:
- Remote access support
- Futureproofed IT solutions
- Proactive IT management
- Responsive IT support
- Advanced cybersecurity
- Predictive analysis for systems to forecast future issues
- Configuration management for databases
- Clearly defined support levels
- End-user access to support via multiple channels
6 Peace of mind
Crucially, outsourcing help desk support relieves you of specific worries. With service desk outsourcing providing help from a highly skilled desk partner, you don’t have to worry about wasting time if something goes awry.
And when it comes to managing technical support, outsourcing IT help desk services can provide several benefits, such as reducing costs, improving efficiency, and enhancing the quality of service. Having this technical backup from experts ensures your peace of mind.
However, selecting a trustworthy and dependable IT outsourcing company is crucial to guarantee a seamless transition that effectively meets your IT needs.
If you already feel IT help desk outsourcing is for you, contact us for a discussion of your needs. Otherwise, let’s look at some possible challenges.
Disadvantages and Challenges of Outsourcing IT Help Desk Services
There can be disadvantages to anything. However, there aren’t many disadvantages to outsourcing help desk services!
But to provide a complete picture, we’ll look at a few of the biggest concerns you might have when utilizing service desk outsourcing assistance.
Imperfect fit
A potential drawback is accidentally hiring an organization whose work ethics and methods don’t align with yours. This can make for an uneasy relationship. So – vet possible IT help desk outsourcing providers.
Less control
Outsourcing help desk services can seem like relinquishing some authority.
On the other hand, relying on an external provider rather than an in-house one means you avoid stress, expenses, and complications that often come with managing your own support team. Overall, this can lead to a more efficient and cost-effective solution for your business needs.
Less personal involvement
A loss of control often leads to less personal involvement in projects and other matters. That’s because outsourced providers answer to their own manager or boss.
However, outsourced help desk providers are usually eager to please you, your employees, and your customers. So – a threefold increase in loyalty!
Company culture is not accurately represented
Although it may not be measurable, corporate culture is always present. Finding the ideal provider for your culture can be challenging. But it’s also costly to find the right in-house employees!
So – before you select an IT help desk provider, consider their role within your company and choose carefully. Do you just want someone to answer customer questions politely and efficiently? Or do you require more depth than simple break/fix problem-solving?
Services an Outsourcing IT Help Desk Provider Offers
If you need reliable help, then outsourced IT help desk managed services are the answer. A third-party managed services provider (MSP) can handle all your business requirements.
A good MSP provides technical support to various types of users, such as organizations, business customers, vendors, or internal teams.
As we mentioned, help desk outsourcing mainly deals with fixing problems or managing incidents promptly so you avoid downtime. However, each provider usually offers a range of services including:
- Break/fix
- Cybersecurity
- Device management
- Real-time support
- Overall tech support
- Troubleshooting
- Maintenance and updates
- Foreign language support
- Help with logins
- Installing of new software and features
In addition, outsourcing help desk organizations often white-label their support – which is a nice way of letting your customer feel they’re speaking to your organization instead of your outsourced, third-party help desk.
Other Types of IT Services You Can Outsource
If outsourcing just your help desk doesn’t fulfill all your needs, there are other IT services available for outsourcing, often from the same supplier.
For example, you can outsource:
- Managed IT services – a well-rounded IT department at your fingertips, effective solutions to everyday problems, from help desk to break/fix solutions.
- Cybersecurity – the latest software and hardware protecting you proactively against all security threats.
- Cloud solutions – pull your information from anywhere at any time, and gain advanced security solutions.
- Phone solutions – such as VoIP to help you stay productive from anywhere over the internet.
- Compliance services – you cannot afford huge fines from possible mismanagement of data you hold, or guarantee to survive the consequent damage to your business.
All of these services may at some point require and involve help desk service support from your outsourcing provider.
Partner with Uprite for Outsourcing IT Help Desk Services
We’ve now covered service desk outsourcing and the various service levels your organization can benefit from.
So – if you’re looking for an excellent company to provide outsourced help desk services and other service desk solutions, Uprite is the IT partner you can trust.
Our skilled team of technicians supports your users professionally and compassionately. Our aim is to keep your employees operating with no downtime by ensuring all your systems are available, secure, and up to date – and your help desk is effective and responsive.
Uprite is a one-stop shop for all your IT requirements in Texas – operating IT support in Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio.
Contact us today and speak to one of our specialists about outsourcing your IT help desk or any of your other services.
Stephen Sweeny, CEO of of Uprite.com, with 20+ years of experience brings tech and creativity together to make cybersecurity simple and IT support seamless. He’s on a mission to help businesses stay secure and ahead of the game!