What are the Strategic Benefits of Hybrid IT?
Hybrid IT is quickly becoming a popular strategy for businesses looking to leverage the expertise of professional IT management while still maintaining an internal IT department for ongoing maintenance and day-to-day functions. Here’s some insight into how this strategy can benefit any organisation in managing their IT and data needs, from schools and educational facilities to financial businesses, healthcare facilities and manufacturing facilities.
#1 – You Can Utilise In-House Expertise and Resources More Efficiently
Rather than pushing your IT team to create and manage solutions in areas they do not specialise in, you can focus their work specifically on areas of their existing expertise. The hybrid IT strategy means you can pull in specialists to structure and develop the best solution for you, then have them delegate appropriate tasks to your existing team. It puts people in the positions best suited to them, while saving time and costs spent on research, training and possibly ineffective solutions.
#2 – Reduce IT Employee Turnover
In some organisations, IT turnover is the highest of any department, usually due to work being repetitive, unrewarding or beyond their professional scope. Developing a partnership with managed IT specialists exposes your team to new and exciting IT projects and solutions, helping them to upskill effectively through onboarding and training, as well as expand their own scope of work under professional, experienced guidance.
#3 – Improve Control Over IT Expenses
While IT solutions are vital for your organisation’s operations, they are not part of its core objectives or strategy. Despite this, many businesses see IT expenses increasingly dominating their budget. It’s exceptionally easy for IT creep to take over an organisation, especially when you want to do everything in house. Not only does your team keep increasing in size and specialist skills (and their associated salary costs), in house IT brings with it significant capital expenditure on hardware and solutions.
Partnering with a managed IT services provider puts a stop to that. Due to their vendor relationships, scope of offering and ability to share resources, managed IT services are able to offer you fixed price services well below the cost of managing all your IT needs in-house. Rather than being surprised by server upgrade or software costs, all that is taken care of by your partner. This means greater budgetary control and predictable IT costs through the year.
#4 – The Ability to Leverage Specialist Expertise
Let’s say your accounting business needs a collaborative and project management application that will allow all your employees to work from home. This isn’t something your in-house IT team has experience with, so they have to research it first. They can suggest a solution, but likely won’t have personal knowledge and experience to back up their recommendation. They also may forget key vulnerabilities like how to monitor for unauthorised access or how to protect the network if an employee’s device is compromised by malware. And then, when a technical issue occurs, they have to start researching again to find the answer. Sounds frustrating, right?
A hybrid IT approach eliminates this frustration, waste and potential security risks because it gives you access to people with the right knowledge, as you need it. They can evaluate your needs, recommend and implement the right solution quickly and affordably (complete with state-of-the-art cybersecurity and data recovery), and be available 24/7 if any issues come up. It saves time, money, resources – and your peace of mind.
#5 – Keep Up with New Tech
Your IT team’s job is to keep your systems up and running smoothly. Your managed IT services provider’s job is to keep up-to-date with all the latest solutions, cybersecurity threats, applications and industry innovations. Together, that makes a crack team that will ensure there are no critical knowledge gaps when it comes to something as important as the security and functionality of your IT systems. The right hybrid IT strategy brings together the best of both sides, creating a flow of information that serves as on-the-job learning, more organised and effective IT infrastructure, and smoother operational performance.
Find a Hybrid IT Strategy That Works for You
At Otto IT, we work with small and medium-sized businesses in every industry across Australia, partnering with our clients to help make running a business easier, more efficient, and more secure.
When you partner with us, it’s not just about getting a solution that works for your business – it’s about building a long-term relationship where we work 24/7 to ensure you have what it takes to run your operation hassle-free. With tailored solutions designed around your goals as well as cutting-edge IT offerings, we put your satisfaction first.
Contact us today to find out more about our managed IT services and solutions.
Jordan is the Chief Commercial Officer at Otto. Jordan is here to help clients remove roadblocks and achieve the business goals they’ve set out. Jordan’s biggest focus is Customer Experience, Business Relationship Management, Risk Management and Strategy.
