Why Outsource IT

The overriding concept is that responsibility for management of a firm’s IT  infrastructure and support can be given to a specialist organisation in part or as a whole to enable the remaining IT resources of a business to focus on adding value to the firm through enhancing business processes and providing a better service to clients.

By turning to a managed service provider, professional practices can have confidence in delivery of services against pre defined service levels.  Cost and benefit will vary for each firm, as will the cultural changes required.  However, an increasing range of benefits can now be achieved with newer technologies for networks, the internet, thin client, storage area networks and other technologies coupled with a growth in potential suppliers

Core Potential Benefits of Outsourcing

Potential areas of improvement	Potential impact on your business
Professional 24-7 monitoring of wide area and local area networks along with back up network facilities with full spam and anti virus control.	No surprises of network degradation, automatic switching to back up facilities ensures continual high performance and secure working, extended beyond office hours – peace of mind.  Software updates introduced seamlessly at the earliest.
Deployment of reliable thin client technology to allow fast access to a host of effectively managed online services.	Reduces the need for network capacity with more control centrally plus allows access to systems securely at anytime from anywhere. Allows your practice to capitalize fully on the tools now available to improve online communication and collaboration internally and with clients.
Utilisation of storage area networks (SAN’s)	Means the systems are more resilient with work being shared over multiple processors.
Replication of systems and data to another firm location or to a third party site. Exceptional standards of online security due to the ability of larger technology driven companies to invest significantly more than most professional practices can afford on their own.	Meets compliance and good business practice needs by ensuring that the firm continues to operate if a disaster should strike at the main IT site. Encryption of online communications. Ready made disaster recovery solutions to support business continuity plans.
IT resource made available by the third party giving numbers of staff and depth and breadth of skills – 24-7 from a team with a substantial bank of technical expertise.	The IT resource headache is removed guaranteeing access to the skills needed to maintain a modern IT system, cover for holidays and sickness and the ability to offer support (including training and coaching) 24 hours a day for 365 days.
Enhanced inclusive commercial terms enabling payment monthly based upon the number of users – can flex up and down.	No capital outlay, scaleable and known charges to ease budgeting, built in hardware replacement programme ensuring the latest technology is available without cost impact
Service Level Agreement – agreed performance and system recovery criteria; guaranteed up-time.	IT downtime at a minimum to maximise fee earner utilisation.  Confidence that IT performance objectives are being met; often with financial penalties available for non performance.