Even if you invest in the latest IT technology, getting a return on your investment depends heavily on having the technical knowledge needed to truly make the most of that technology. As today’s IT solutions grow more advanced and integrated, the gaps in the skills and experiences of in-house IT teams are growing more pronounced, in addition to the risks created by those gaps. We’ll explore how technical support services can help fill these gaps, ensuring that businesses get the knowledge and experience they need to keep their IT systems available, and to make the most of all the advanced capabilities they have to offer.
IT downtime is more costly than ever before
It should go without saying that the effectiveness of an IT investment depends heavily on making sure that the IT system actually stays up and running. Unplanned downtime in your IT systems will decrease the productivity of both your IT staff and your end-users. Each hour that the system stays down is another hour that your IT staff is dedicating their precious time and resources to getting the system back online, instead of doing the kind of value-added work they should be focused on.
Today’s IT systems have grown more integrated than ever before, meaning that downtime in one system could create a “ripple effect” of lost productivity in places that you might not expect. For instance:
- Outages in big data and analytics systems might slow the flow of insights to strategic decision-making initiatives, creating delays in marketing, resource allocation, and more
- Outages in mobility systems might make marketing, sales and service professionals less productive, in turn leading to missed revenue opportunities
- Outages in social and collaborative apps can slow down projects throughout the company by making it more difficult for internal and external stakeholders to communicate and share ideas
Technical support services are needed to prevent unplanned downtime
Support from experienced, certified technical professionals can help prevent the high costs and lost productivity created by unscheduled downtime. For one, TSS professionals are able to provide diagnostic and resolution skills, ensuring that when downtime does occur, it won’t stretch on any longer than it absolutely has to. This helps keep costs to a minimum. The TSS team can also provide a single point of contact to help streamline problem resolution: no matter which IT system fails, the client knows they can go to the same person to quickly get that system back online.
In addition, today’s TSS professionals are able to go one step further by providing more proactive services. By monitoring IT systems and determining which ones are likely to experience downtime in the near future, the TSS team can provide preventative maintenance services that stop downtime from even occurring in the first place. This provides a much more predictable and effective approach to avoiding downtime than a strictly reactive, break-then-fix approach would.
Finally, in addition to keeping staff and end-users as productive as possible, TSS can help you make the most of the new capabilities of your IT investments. In many cases, a lack of experience with a new IT environment could prevent you from gaining the return you were seeking from that investment in the first place. TSS gives you the skills and experiences needed to make sure you're getting the most value possible out of your hardware and software investments.
Next steps
Investing in technical support services is necessary to decrease risk and optimize results within your IT environment. Contact us at Cima Solutions Group today to learn more about how our technical support services could benefit you.
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