Thursday, December 13, 2012

Are Managed Services Professionals Worth the Investment?

As business owners work to meet projected cash flow goals and try to keep profit margins at a certain percentage, they are constantly evaluating ways to cut costs. When organizational leaders are looking to cut costs, they first evaluate the department or expense that costs the company the most money. In most organizations the most expensive department is the information technology (IT) department, because an organization's commitment to software, hardware, and IT professionals leads to high annual costs for the company. What most organizations do not realize is that it is possible to cut costs within the IT department without seeing a drop in performance or efficiency.


The way to make cuts without minimizing the effectiveness of the IT department is by hiring IT consulting services to analyze existing processes and make recommendations. These professionals might identify new hardware for the company to purchase, decide which managed services will improve operations, or help the business consolidate existing hardware to eliminate waste. Below are three reasons why the professionals who provide IT consulting services are worth the investment.


Consultants Offer an Objective Viewpoint


Ideally a manager or organizational leader will always act objectively, but it is impossible to guarantee that personal feelings and biases will not affect the individual's decisions. When evaluating the organization, a leader might be hesitant to assign blame to a particular employee or department, fearing retaliation. Similarly, a leader might make decisions on who to lay off based on who he or she likes the best rather than who provides the most value to a company. IT consulting services professionals come in with a truly objective viewpoint because they have no ties to the organization, and therefore are not afraid to ask the tough questions.


Consultants Use Their Extensive Experience


One does not become an IT consultant without years of experience, and once an individual becomes a consultant, he or she will gain experience solving problems with companies of all sizes in a number of different industries. This helps consultants provide IT consulting services because they know where to start when the hiring company says that it needs to cut costs. The consultant might identify a particular component of the IT infrastructure that needs to be replaced or could recommend managed services so that the company can outsource the services that it cannot efficiently provide in-house.


Consultants can Recommend Managed Services


As mentioned above, there are certain services that every IT department needs even though few are able to supply these services on their own. Managed services firms can create a data backup system, oversee network security so that it can locate privacy breaches, or perform quality assurance testing. It might be more cost effective for some companies to outsource some of these services over others, so a good consultant will help companies decide which services to outsource and which managed services firms should be hired.


Three of the reasons why IT consulting services are worth the investment are to cut costs, improve operational efficiency, and determine the type of managed services necessary to hire an IT consultant today.


IT consulting services are beneficial because consultants can help a company decide which Atlanta managed services it needs.

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