Technology is the backbone of most businesses in operation today. From streamlining processes to enhancing customer service offerings to simply fostering better internal communication, businesses run on IT. Regardless of company size or IT sophistication, if you own a business in 2024, there is some aspect of it that uses technology for some aspect of your day to day.
However, not all businesses need a dedicated IT team to monitor the way they work and troubleshoot any issues that can crop up. For some smaller and medium enterprises, managed IT services can fill in the gap between hiring a dedicated IT team and relying on your internal non-professional employees.
Here’s how IT operations management can help your business.
What is IT Operations management?
Larger businesses have IT departments: dedicated employees that are solely responsible for keeping the technology of the company running. They’ll manage any issues that crop up, such as when a server goes down or there is a data security brief.
IT Operations Management is the overarching umbrella that IT departments serve under. IT Operations Management ensures that your IT operations business-wide – including the IT department – function in a way that will minimise disruptions, use every tool available resourcefully, and keep the company running smoothly. While the IT department might focus solely on fixing any user-error that will prevent other employees from functioning, IT operations management takes a top-down view of IT operations.
What are some services that fall under IT Operations Management?
IT Operations management, to a certain extent, are the ones that keep the IT side of the business running. Some of their roles include:
- Monitoring IT systems to make sure that they are constantly online, and keeping an eye on their performance.
- Responding rapidly to incidences such as service outages or interruptions to minimise the cost of this downtime for business. They will also identify what caused the incident, and implement ways to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.
- Adapt the IT infrastructure business-wide to support business needs, which sometimes includes working in new technologies such as AI or business intelligence software.
- Monitor business operations and analyse usage patterns so that they can scale up or scale down business technology needs depending on the overall operation. This could include everything from implementing a better network infrastructure to ensure that employees in the office can all hop onto a video-call without buffering or loading issues, or something such as adding an extra server for storage.
- Manage any software-as-a-service products to ensure that the right employees have continuous access to the right software.
How does IT Operations Management help business?
A well-functioning business needs technology to run, and any downtime or dip in operations can have drastic, monetary consequences for that particular business. While your entire company might be too small to benefit from an IT team, the problems that can occasionally hamper business operations will still crop up. Your servers can still go down; employees can still have difficulty accessing the right information; data security breaches can still happen.
IT Operations management reduces costs, improves the security of the overall business, and allows an organisation to easily adhere to legal requirements.
What if I don’t need an internal IT Operations Management team for my business?
If your business is too small to require an internal IT operations management team, you can outsource IT operations management to a third party company. This has the same benefits as an internal support team, mainly improving your business’ productivity, security, and reducing the costs lost as a result of incidents.
Pros of outsourced IT Operations Management:
- Reduce the risk of severe downtime due to incidents. Companies will always have access to IT operations management.
- Adhere all IT operations seamlessly to legal requirements for the entire business, improving compliance with mandated documentation that can speed up employee and client onboarding.
- Document and implement strong data security practices that will protect the business against the catastrophic fallout of a breach.
- Boosts productivity by introducing processes that can refine the work done by employees.
Cons of outsourced IT Operations Management:
- Can take longer to respond to crisis as they will often have multiple clients ongoing.
- Can take a long time to put into action as the business itself can require several overhauls in operation.
Will IT Operations Management help my business?
Almost definitely. IT Operations Management will speed up, improve, and protect your business, aligning your business goals for growth and productivity with the tools your employees need to meet those goals.
Interested in outsourcing your IT Operations Management and need a guiding hand? We’re here to help, and we’ve worked with businesses like yours. Reach out and let’s talk.
