We all hate outsourcing but what about service extension?

Every time I mention outsourced help desk people shudder. Rightly or wrongly, outsourcing is associated with calling a company that does not care enough and provides a service that leaves the caller wondering why they bothered calling at all.

Given the internal systems, recruiting practices, staff education and culture of some IT companies I can truly understand how this perception has come about. So it is clear that businesses like to keep some IT skills in house if they are big enough to afford to.

So the challenge is to find a services extension organisation that lets you tap into the required resources at the right time for advisory services, advanced technical services or low level grunt to get things moved on a large scale like a desktop roll-out of dozens of new PCs.

The expression ‘partnering’ or ‘strategic partnering’ is not a new thing but it is the key to success of small but nimble IT departments. Good management and governance is the key to success for your business, so how do you achieve that with IT services extensions?

The solution is to find providers for each of the levels of technology support required:

• advisers that enrich your IT strategy by providing current options
• an external audit of your status quo to hold current staff or providers accountable
• technical architects to design the required systems infrastructure or application layer
• tactical implementation with minimised impact to your business
• ongoing day-to-day management using logging of tickets
• monitoring and reporting systems to ensure you know the health of your systems in real time.

You may have some of these capabilities in house and so an outsourcing arrangement is a big hammer to swing, but a little strategic service extension may help you overcome your gumption traps and get the right technology implemented and running smoothly in a short period of time.

Just yesterday there were some interesting facts published from the EY Australian Productivity Pulse. Using the same resources that got you to this point and expecting them to get you to where you need to be may not be the most efficient process. Strategically extending your capabilities with advice, auditing, design, implementation or support may be just the ticket. There are local firms using smart local staff who can help you with whichever part of the puzzle is holding you back.

David Markus is the founder of Combo – the IT services company that is known for solving business problems with IT. How can we help?