If you are reading this article, chances are your business needs some help with your current IT needs. Perhaps you already have an “IT guy”, or a few people juggling some tech duties, but as your company grows, or as the mission-critical operations change – when is it the right time to turn to a professional IT services management?
When do you need a dedicated IT Manager for your business?
Let’s consider the top 5 signs of the most contributing factors:
1. Complexity: Sometimes it is not about number of people in your organization that require IT services – it is about complexity of your business needs overall. When your business IT needs are becoming more complex. Maybe you’ve hired a handful of full-time IT people, but you’re still having to regularly stop or slow operations because your IT department doesn’t have the necessary experience to meet your needs.
2. Size: On another hand, size matters – even if you have simple streamlined operations and minimum needs, more of your employees require IT support, as your organization is getting bigger. You probably know quite a bit about computer network needs for your business, however to handle multiple systems and ever evolving hardware and software requirements can get intimidating even for those adept to new technologies
3. Growth Rate: as your company changes size by growing or downsizing – having someone who can manage the process and anticipate the environment changes is crucial. Experienced managers have been through the changes before, and can take care of your systems, while you are concentrating on the business process.
4. Technology Evolution: Don’t you know it, things that were oh-so-cutting-edge yesterday, may become obsolete tomorrow. It is especially tough when your mission-critical software vendors applies big changes to their product, leaving you lost in their technical lingo. IT managers help your business navigate through ever changing technology, helping you separate the fads from the facts, and keep the hand on the pulse of your technology needs, from software upgrades and license updates, to hardware requirements and IT vendor relationships. When your needs change, and new technology hit the market, who are you going to call? Your IT manager.
5. Big Picture: As you make plans for the future and anticipate growth, you need to consider your IT department as natural part of you whole business, rather then an add-on, an outside help that comes in to clean-up and provide tech support after the fact. IT is part of your business organism, not an afterthought – you can benefit from IT manager’s experience in IT architecture planning and implementation of computer systems who can help you make a solid, most efficient plan plan, implement and monitor your environment as part of your business practices.
How to choose an IT manager?
Who you have on your business team ultimately determines your company’s success. Next week, we’ll discuss how to choose an IT manager for your company.
How is your state of IT? Call Us: (855) 551-7760 with any questions.
