You are not alone. Most mid-sized businesses have the same problem. Why?
- Let me make the obvious point first. Good people – those with the right technical skills – are hard to find. Great people – those who have the right technical skills AND other desirable qualities – are really rare.
- Those that do exist generally prefer to work in the IT industry – rather than on the client side. This reflects the fact that great people enjoy the “rush” associated with go lives on new projects – because they learn more. They don’t find “run” as interesting.
- Those that do work client side generally prefer to work for bigger businesses – in larger internal IT teams – where there can see a budget for skills development, the opportunity for career progression
These issues leave mid-sized businesses – those with IT teams of between 4 and 10 people – in a very difficult position. They often suffer high churn – as their best people get poached by others – and then they struggle to recruit at the same level. These issues aren’t going away any time soon – neither is the need to provide your business with effective IT support.
Here are just some of the things you need good people (that you can’t hire) to do
- Maintain laptops, PC’s, servers – all the physical IT infrastructure you rely upon – fix it when hardware breaks.
- Manage the laptops, PC’s, servers – all the physical IT infrastructure you rely upon – apply updates as directed by Vendors, ensure appropriate end point protection is in place, provision new equipment to a schedule or on demand.
- Monitor your network and internet connectivity – fix it fast when it fails.
- Monitor the availability of cloud services that you rely upon – liaise with service providers on your behalf.
- Monitor your consumption of cloud services – be proactive about minimising your costs.
- Administer Identity Management on your behalf – ensure joiners have access on day 1 and leavers are removed immediately.
- Answer “how to” questions from you users.
If insanity is defined as doing the same thing and expecting a different result – what might you do differently?
How TSG Can Help
You could outsource any or all of the above tasks to TSG – confident that we will do a great job for you and your people.
How so?
TSG serves over 1200 clients. We have 90+ staff permanently assigned to supporting them. We invite every customer to score our response to every support call using the NPS methodology.
NPS scores are calculated by asking customers a very simple question. Given your recent experience with TSG (their support call) would you recommend us to family or friends. They are invited to score you from 1 (no) through to 10 (yes). You take the % of 8/9/10 responses and deducted the % of 1,2,3 responses. The worst possible result is –100. The best possible result is +100.
Over the last 12 months we have averaged |+84. The industry standard is circa +30. + 60 is generally seen as extraordinary. I look at every score – every day.
