How to Manage Big IT Projects with a Small IT Team

If your business is anything like the majority of others in the U.S., you probably don’t have a large, dedicated IT team on staff that’s capable of handling all of your technology needs, big or small.

This is totally normal.

For most businesses, if they do have an on-staff IT professional or small team, they’re typically hired for specific functions and have a focused skill set that benefits your business on a daily basis. This means that it’s likely they’re frequently overburdened by projects that arise and require expertise, manpower, or experience that they don’t have on hand.

The primary issue that comes about from this lack of resources is that your on-staff IT professionals, or in some cases non-IT employees, are required to perform functions outside of their wheelhouse.

Relying on employees without the proper expertise to perform IT functions can, and often does, create a vast range of issues for your business. At best, you’ll pay for the wasted time employees spend self-educating to conquer the unfamiliar challenge. At worst, a more serious situation could result from an improperly performed job — things like holes in your security or lost data.

There’s another problem associated with reallocating your IT team to non-critical jobs outside their expertise. While they research the challenge to find a solution or perform other time-consuming tasks, the critical problems that they were hired to solve must be put on hold, slowing the growth of your business.

Don’t worry — there’s good news. There’s a simple, cost-effective fix to all these issues: Outsourced IT support services.

When it comes to tackling large, complex, or specialized IT projects, support from a trusted vendor can save you and your team both time and money, and it can also help avoid loads of frustration all around.

Here are just a few examples of how outsourced IT could help support you:

1. Office Relocation

Moving to a new office is no simple task, and it requires extensive planning to achieve smoothly. A major part of this is disconnecting, moving, reconnecting, testing, and troubleshooting every device in your office. If your business has 200 computers and an IT department of five people, that’s 40 computers per staff member. Outsourcing support for your IT team for this project not only cuts down on their workload, but the experienced professionals you hire for this job ensure that the process runs smoothly and efficiently.

2. Software Upgrades

Software updates, like the Windows 10 upgrade, can also be managed by IT support services. Dedicated support for Windows 7 will end in January of 2020, making the system obsolete. Companies that don’t want to face all the risks associated with continued use of the operating system (things like increased risk of cyber-attack, lost data, and unfixable bugs) will need to upgrade each of their computers to Windows 10. Once again, relying on your team to achieve this could exponentially increase the amount of time spent on the project, so it’s likely more cost-effective to find a vendor that offers professional Windows 10 upgrades.

3. IT Staffing

As previously mentioned, if you have a dedicated IT staff, they’re likely overbooked. Partnering with an IT support services vendor can help give your team a much-needed reprieve, whether that’s in the form of a vacation or a lighter workload. Plus, IT staffing is a great resource for filling holes in your team due to things like maternity leave, illness, or lack of specific expertise, and it can even bolster your capabilities in times of increased activity. The best part is that you can get support on a weekly, monthly, or as-needed basis.

It’s important to understand your in-house IT team’s skill set and capabilities. Once you’ve examined your company’s abilities and compared them to your current projects, you may discover that it would be more feasible, efficient, and cost-effective to reach out to an outside vendor for support.

Almost all businesses can benefit from IT support, whether that comes in the form of security, cloud hosting, staffing, outsourcing, or anything else. Next time a major IT project appears on your business’s horizon, consider reaching out to a trusted IT support services provider.