IT Support On-Site – How to Choose the Right Solution for Your Business

Most businesses require some level of IT support, from full support to augmenting in-house technical teams. While there are different types and levels of IT support, most fall into two main categories: remote and on-site. In this blog, we are focusing on IT support on-site and how best to choose the right solution for your business.

While there are benefits to remote IT support and situations where it is the ideal solution, there are other circumstances where it is more effective (and often essential) to have technically skilled resources at your location.

Choosing the Best On-Site IT Support for Your Business

There are factors you should consider when selecting any service provider, including an on-site IT support provider. This includes:

• Expertise and experience – is the service provider experienced with a track record of success?
• Costs – are you happy with the costs and clear about how and what you will be charged?
• Reputation – does the service provider have a good reputation, positive customer testimonials, etc?
• Responsiveness – is the service provider responsive to your requests, and is the standard of communication and customer service up to scratch?

For this blog, however, we want to dive deeper into the factors and considerations that are more specific and unique to the selection of an on-site IT support provider. The points in the list above are all important, of course, but you will maximise success and return on investment by factoring the following considerations into your decision-making process.

• Why do you need on-site IT support?
• How important is industry expertise?
• What type and level of support do you need?
• Will the delivery of the on-site IT support solution align with your operational and business needs?

We can now explore each of the above points in more detail.

Why Do You Need On-Site IT Support?

Understanding why you need to partner with an on-site IT support provider will help with the decision-making process. Common reasons for needing on-site IT support include:

• The type or level of support that you need either can’t be done remotely or will be done to a higher standard if it is in-person.
• Your in-house non-technical resources are spending too much time working with remote support to resolve issues, taking them away from other critical and value-adding tasks.
• To facilitate operational priorities, such as having on-site resources from a specialist provider at a satellite facility to support the head office-based IT team.
• For logistical or budgetary reasons, such as the need for enhanced flexibility (which is challenging to achieve with employees) to increase or decrease levels of on-site support as required, often at short notice.
• You have a requirement for a broad range of skills and capabilities that would be difficult and costly to recruit and retain as employees.
• You want maximum stability to eliminate the risks that arise when IT resources resign to take up another job, leaving skill gaps and taking away knowledge from your business in the process.

How Important is Industry Expertise?

There are some industries where it is highly beneficial for on-site IT support to have direct industry skills, capabilities, and experience. This especially applies in highly regulated industries.

We can draw on our own experience at Westbourne to add further context to this point. We specialise in providing on-site IT support (and other services) to companies in the pharmaceutical industry. In doing so, we don’t just provide IT resources with technical skills. Instead, the IT resources we place on-site in pharmaceutical facilities also have regulatory, quality, and scientific skills, knowledge, and experience, enhancing the standard of service we provide to pharma industry clients.

As in the pharmaceutical industry, if you have specialist IT requirements and/or unique technical environments, it is beneficial to partner with an experienced on-site IT support provider.

What Type and Level of Support Do You Need?

On-site IT support can be very prescriptive, functional, and task based. This type of support can be efficient and might suit your requirements.

That said, many organisations need on-site IT support that is more proactive and engaged with business needs, priorities, and objectives. This is IT support that is adaptable and strategic and aims to facilitate continuous improvement in everything from IT infrastructure to the technical capabilities of in-house resources to business process automation.

Is There Alignment with Your Needs?

The delivery of on-site IT support must align with the needs and operational requirements of your business. While it is important to consider technical advice and recommendations, the relationship shouldn’t be one where you need to adapt to how the IT support partner provides its service. It should be the other way around, i.e., the on-site IT support provider should align the delivery of its services with the needs of your business.

Adding Value to Your Business

The above points will help you choose the right on-site IT support partner. At the centre of everything is how the relationship adds value to your business. How will the IT support partner facilitate continuous improvement and contribute to key performance metrics such as productivity, risk mitigation, and compliance? The answer to questions like these is where you will achieve your objectives and maximise return on investment.

To discuss your requirements for on-site IT support, including specialist on-site IT support for the pharmaceutical industry, please get in touch.

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