There are many reasons to outsource IT for your business. The sometimes unbudgeted costs of IT and the continuing education it requires for personnel to maintain the IT infrastructure, the downtime and customer issues arising from IT emergencies, and changing methods of measuring efficiency and effectiveness can take their toll on an organization of any size. For small to medium-sized businesses, the toll can be so overwhelmingly financial that it is easier to reduce the business than to try and keep up. For large Fortune 100 businesses, managing both IT and customer service responsibilities becomes large operational management tasks with little to no conversation between the two responsibilities, and unfortunately, that frequently results in a lack of responsibility when something goes wrong.

The solution for many companies is to outsource their IT and customer support services, and customers worldwide have proven themselves notoriously finicky about both. Customer ire has resulted in negative websites, Twitter trending regarding negative information, forums, blogs, and negative commentary on Facebook fan pages, resulting in not only a negative brand impact, but more funds allocated to marketing and public relations to manage the brand reputation and engage in crisis communications. Outsourcing is perhaps the single most important decision a company can make. The key to outsourcing lies in four crucial concepts: reliability, active and reactive support, technology management, and technology consulting to provide ongoing planning and budgeting support.

All organizations like to tout reliability as part of their service package. Unfortunately, operational delivery is a challenge in a 24/7 customer environment, and the challenge at Data Balance is only different in that our support isn’t just for us – it’s for our customers and their customers. We measure, mitigate, plan, manage and report to achieve optimal reliability. Reporting is perhaps the most important aspect of reliability. In reports, our customers can see how reliable they are for their customers, note any fluctuations, and make assessments for future change. Reporting also helps determine whether there are too many technicians assigned to support, or too few. It’s important to stay balanced for operational efficiency.

Our approach to support is both active and reactive. Our customers deserve to know and be prepared for planned outages, how long the planned outage will occur and the reason. Unplanned outages are an unfortunate reality in today’s IT environment, and although any outage requires extra customer support, unplanned outages are always an unpleasant surprise. The last aspect to support is reporting. It’s important to know how many customers were impacted, the timeframe of impact, and what steps were taken to support them while their issue was resolved. Reporting is also important for both internal and external support.

One of the keys to exceptional support is good technology management. The likelihood of an unplanned outage or service issue reduces quickly when the appropriate patches are installed, remote back-up is utilized, and spam and spyware is kept to a minimum. Data Balance puts together teams of experts whose sole responsibility is to stay current in their field, apply what they learn for our customers, and evaluate whether every new technology in the landscape is truly necessary for every business. The final step in technology management is documentation. Our customers and your customers, are always happier with the customer service they receive when they are provided information to make a fully informed decision with.

Providing information is a way of doing business for Data Balance. We view our role as also consulting. Whether the role is less formal, such as interpreting results and reporting them, or more formal, engaging in budget forecasting and planning, assessing the business impact of new technology on the horizon and its benefit in any one environment, and recommending continuing education for in-house IT, we will contribute to the success of your operational needs. Here again, our goal is to make sure our customers are provided with the tools required for success.

The intangible aspect of IT and support is in the numbers. It’s in the number of customers that don’t call and complain, planning outages when customer usage is at low volume to reduce the impact, the positive feedback received via support and sales staff that isn’t documented, and the professional referrals. All of these intangibles speak to a greater success with IT support.

Good companies that handle IT outsourcing know that IT support is important. Great companies that handle IT outsourcing know that not only is IT support important, but that communication is a two-way street, and it includes reporting numbers and providing metrics their customers can use and fit within their corporate reporting structure. Data Balance strives to work as a partner, working within the operational needs of our clients, so you can work with your clients.